a humbling 16-33 loss to the All Blacks in Johannesburg<\/a>, Rassie Erasmus named his team for the second dig.<\/p>\nOn the starting line-up were were 16 players as he waited on the fitness of skipper Siya Kolisi, who has only played 24 minutes of Test rugby this year. The talisman was then given the all clear to share a field with another double World Cup winner, fly-half Handre Pollard.<\/p>\n
Except the metronomic 10 with a laser scope in his right boot picked up a \u2018niggle\u2019 on Wednesday and was hooked from the side. So Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, who had a stinker at Ellis Park, was drafted back into the mix.<\/p>\n
All the while New Zealand\u2019s coach Dave Rennie questioned the legality of South Africa\u2019s scrum tactics. Oh, Nika Amashukeli, who was supposed to referee the game, failed to recover from an illness and has been replaced by Angus Gardner. Oy vey!<\/p>\n
As the fun and games unfolded, the discourse on social media \u2013 admittedly a toxic place at the best of times – grew ever more febrile. We\u2019ve been told so many times that these two rugby nations respect each. That no other rivalry in rugby, perhaps all sport, is basted in this much respect. Well, a glance online shows that things are fraying at the edges.<\/p>\n
This just shows how much it all means to both sets of coaches, players and supporters. One could argue that this is the most important game for the Boks since their one point win over New Zealand in the World Cup final three years ago.<\/p>\n
Their claim to global dominance hangs by a thread. They simply cannot afford to lose this one. On the other hand, the All Blacks know that they are on the cusp of something quite extraordinary.<\/p>\n
Cape Town Tests are usually stodgy affairs though the rain seems to have held out. Still, it won\u2019t necessarily be a pretty thing this afternoon. Whoever wins it will have to dig deep and go to some dark places.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll find out who comes out on top once things kick off at 3:10 pm local time\/4:10 BST.<\/p>\n
Teams and other updates to come. Feel free to write in. I\u2019d love to hear from you.<\/p>\n
Share<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key events South Africa team Pieter-Steph du Toit \u2013 in my opinion the greatest Springbok of all time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-584080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Daniel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Daniel_Gallan.png\")
Daniel Gallan<\/p>\n