Former Springbok Hanyani ‘Shimmy’ Shimange has claimed that no one can get close to Rassie Erasmus’ side in terms of the depth of their squad.
South Africa currently top the World Rugby rankings following their demolition of the All Blacks in Wellington, where they once again displayed the talent within the country.
Erasmus sprung a surprise by making mass alterations to his side, fielding a much younger group behind the scrum, but it paid off as they hammered New Zealand 43-10 at Sky Stadium.
Rassie’s rotation
The Boks boss has become renowned for rotating his team in his attempt to build depth ahead of the 2027 Rugby World Cup.
Although it has perhaps led to some surprise results, such as the home defeat to the Wallabies in Johannesburg, Shimange believes that it has put the Springboks in a very strong position.
“If you look at the schedule for the end-of-year tour, you actually need two squads. You look at Damian de Allende, Jesse Kriel, they’ve still got a lot to offer,” he said on The Verdict podcast.
“Everyone goes it’s a young squad or this and that, it isn’t, I think the 45 is incredibly powerful. Not one fly-half is going to play against France, Ireland, Wales.
“What we’re actually doing now, I think we’re a step ahead and there’s a gap in terms of that in world rugby. I can’t think of a better squad.
“If [Beauden] Barrett goes down [for the All Blacks], [Damian] McKenzie comes in but who’s their third fly-half?”
Shimange was joined on the show by Springboks legend Schalk Burger, who suggested, “they’ve got to go and fetch [Richie] Mo’unga.”
Burger does, however, believe that there is a rival to South Africa, slightly contesting Shimange’s point that the Boks are well clear.
“I’ll tell you who’s got a lot of depth, it’s France,” he said.
Perfection against the All Blacks
What 2025 has shown, though, is that Erasmus’ side remain in a strong position with their hugely impressive victory over the All Blacks no doubt the highlight so far this year.
Burger and Shimange both rated that performance 10 out of 10, with the former stating: “We scored six tries, almost eight – we crossed the whitewash eight times.”
The latter stated that you can always argue over perfection but that it was as close to that as you could possibly get.
“If we’re going to nit-pick, we’ll say we missed a lineout on the five-metre, we did this, we did that,” Shimange said.
Burger agreed, adding: “In the first half, there were a few skill execution [errors], some knock-ons here, knock-ons there. You go into half-time trailing and think maybe we’re watching a horror movie, but if you go through the whole game, our plan was perfect and we absolutely dominated.”
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