{"id":181127,"date":"2025-10-06T03:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T03:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/181127\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T03:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T03:14:10","slug":"rugby-championship-2025-what-did-we-learn-from-this-years-tournament-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/181127\/","title":{"rendered":"Rugby Championship 2025: What did we learn from this year’s tournament?"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Africa dominated the men’s dream team of the year at the World Rugby awards last year.<\/p>\n

Having picked up back-to-back Rugby Championships, the world’s number one-ranked team could be doing so again.<\/p>\n

But what makes the achievement more remarkable is the amount of players head coach Rassie Erasmus has used.<\/p>\n

“I think we used close to 47 players and I’d love to have given more chances,” he said.<\/p>\n

Defeats by Australia and New Zealand over the first three games put pressure on Erasmus – but subsequent results made clear the “risk” to develop talent was worth it.<\/p>\n

Three wins from three games followed to secure the title, with 23-year-old Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu starting all of them.<\/p>\n

A Springbok record 37 points<\/a> against Argentina in Durban was the highlight as Feinberg-Mngomezulu developed as a potential frontrunner to start at fly-half in November.<\/p>\n

Ethan Hooker, 22, began the final three games on the left wing and produced a standout performance against New Zealand, while Canan Moodie, also 23, started at outside centre in the final three games.<\/p>\n

With the title on the line, Erasmus trusted his young stars and they delivered. <\/p>\n

Selection will now heat up for the autumn as the Springboks’ World Cup winners will hope to return to the side, especially for games against France and Ireland.<\/p>\n

Erasmus once said he would “rather win the World Cup than sit at an 85% win rate”.<\/p>\n

Well, he has now built a squad that looks like it can do both.<\/p>\n

“I think one of our goals is to stay in the present, do well, and not just focus on the World Cup,” he added.<\/p>\n

“But I think definitely trying to build squad depth played a role in the lack of continuity.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Africa dominated the men’s dream team of the year at the World Rugby awards last year. Having…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-181127","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}