Watch every second of the Wallabies 2026 Test season live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\n“This success will live long in the memory. We must celebrate how we recovered from losing the first Test to win three in a row,” De Villiers told SuperSport TV.<\/p>\n
Fellow former South Africa skippers Victor Matfield and Schalk Burger and ex wing Breyton Paulse also hailed the reigning Rugby World Cup champions and top ranked team.<\/p>\n
“This team has an incredible ability to turn things around. We were trailing in the series just a few weeks ago and now we are jubilant,” said Matfield.<\/p>\n
“A key factor was the aerial battle. I was worried about that aspect of the game before the series, but we grew stronger as the series developed.<\/p>\n
“We must also salute (head coach) Rassie Erasmus. He did not panic after the first Test loss. He said then that we could still win the series.”<\/p>\n
Burger, a flanker who led the Springboks 11 years ago when centre De Villiers and lock Matfield were unavailable, said the men in green and gold “always find a way (to win)”.<\/p>\n
“I was a little concerned that we built only a three-point lead by half-time. We made six entries into the All Blacks 22 and scored just two tries.<\/p>\n
– ‘Amazing’ –<\/p>\n
“But the second half was a different story. We dominated the aerial battle and I thought (wing) Kurt-Lee Arendse was outstanding.<\/p>\n
“It was also tremendous to see so much green (South African supporters) in an American stadium. This augurs well for the 2031 World Cup in the USA.<\/p>\n
Paulse also highlighted how virtually every aerial contest in Baltimore was won by South Africa.<\/p>\n
“This is the result of many hours of extra work at the training grounds. A decade ago we really battled in this facet of the game.<\/p>\n
“Kurt-Lee (Arendse) is not a tall player, yet he won numerous aerial duels. That is amazing, truly amazing.<\/p>\n
“Looking at the whole series, (hooker) Malcolm Marx gets my vote as the outstanding player. His strength, his skill, his commitment. What a Springbok.”<\/p>\n
After four intense, bruising battles with second ranked New Zealand, South Africa return to action on September 29 against 2027 World Cup hosts Australia in Perth.<\/p>\n
Erasmus has hinted that Springboks who did not face the All Blacks, including fly-half Handre Pollard and lock\/loose forward Franco Mostert, will feature against the Wallabies.<\/p>\n
In November, they are away to Italy, France and Ireland in the second half of the Nations Championship league phase.<\/p>\n
After facing the Irish in Dublin on November 21, the Springboks travel to London for a three-day finals series the following weekend.<\/p>\n
Winning in Baltimore gave South Africa a 7-1 Tests record this year. Before tackling New Zealand, they beat England, Scotland and Wales in the Nations Championship and Argentina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former South Africa captain Jean de Villiers said on Sunday that the 43-28 series-clinching victory over New Zealand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[10751,64,63,760,85,2995],"class_list":["post-891189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-all-blacks","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-springboks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}