Former Springboks centre Robbie Fleck has offered an interesting explanation to their improvement with ball in hand over the past 18 months.<\/p>\n
The best South African sides have always been physically dominant and that was a hallmark of their 2019 and 2023 Rugby World Cup triumphs.<\/p>\n
However, head coach Rassie Erasmus<\/a> believes that they need to expand their attacking game ahead of the next global tournament in Australia.<\/p>\n Improving the Springboks attack<\/p>\n Following that success in France, Erasmus brought in New Zealander Tony Brown and that has paid dividends with them playing some wonderful rugby since the previous World Cup.<\/p>\n Last Saturday, they produced a dominant display to swat aside Japan, scoring nine tries in a 61-7 victory over the Brave Blossoms.<\/p>\n That performance, allied by some of their other efforts in 2025, prompted Springboks<\/a> legend Jean de Villiers to say on The Verdict podcast: \u201cNow you add this attacking play, we are getting close to playing a fantastic brand of rugby.\u201d<\/p>\n South Africa still place a huge emphasis on their set-piece, kicking and defence, but Fleck states that one significant development has made a big difference to their attacking improvement.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was probably to be expected to give away a couple of maul penalties from Japan\u2019s side and there was inevitably going to be a yellow card at some stage with the illegal sacking of the maul,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat was interesting was one of the tackles was a head high shot, which was a yellow, but you\u2019ve got to think about how that comes about.<\/p>\n \u201cGenerally, the Japanese guys are a little bit smaller than our big ball carriers so that means that we are carrying exceptionally low at the moment.<\/p>\n \u201cYou talk about our attack and how it\u2019s evolved, it\u2019s also the fact that we\u2019re not upright in the way we carry anymore. We\u2019re carrying low, we definitely won that height battle and that\u2019s led to the [Japanese] mistakes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a combination of everything working together that delivers the pressure and the yellow card, but there are certain parts to our game which we weren\u2019t good at a year or two ago that we have ramped up now, and body height is one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n