The opening match of the historical Nations Championship tournament is shaping up to an epic showdown between two of the game\u2019s fiercest rivals.<\/p>\n
The Nations Championship gets underway in the first week of July.<\/p>\n
South Africa<\/a> host England<\/a> at Ellis Park on July 4 in the first round.<\/p>\n It will only be their second meeting since the Springboks\u2019 come-from-behind one-point (16-15) win over England at Stade de France, Paris, at the 2023 World Cup.<\/p>\n It kicks off the much-anticipated cross-hemisphere tournament.<\/p>\n The tournament features two groups of teams competing in a Northern versus Southern Hemisphere format across six rounds, with three fixtures in July and again in November, before culminating in a first-of-its-kind Finals weekend to decide the dominant nation and balance of power between the hemispheres.<\/p>\n With games against Scotland<\/a> and Wales<\/a> to come, before the four-Test Greatest Rivalry series against New Zealand, and the year-end encounters with Italy, France<\/a> and Ireland, the season-opener in Johannesburg (there is a \u2018warm-up\u2019 match before this) is shaping as a crucial scene-setter for the Boks.<\/p>\n \u201cEngland are hitting their straps now,\u201d Erasmus said at Springbok headquarters in the Plattekloof suburb of Cape Town.<\/p>\n Steve Borthwick\u2019s team is on an 11-Test winning streak, with their only loss in 2025 the 22-27 squeaker against Ireland<\/a> in the Six Nations<\/a> opener in February.<\/p>\n Erasmus, who was a member of the Springbok team that lost to England to end a 17-match winning streak in 1998, was full of praise for the No.3-ranked team.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can see there is something special happening in the England team,\u201d the Bok coach said, adding: \u201cThey have the Six Nations before we meet them.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether they win the Six Nations or lose a few matches, for us it will be a massive game against England.<\/p>\n \u201cSouth Africa against England in the first match of the Nations Championship is massive, a very important game.\u201d<\/p>\n The Boks are planning a \u2018warm-up\u2019 match against an unnamed team ahead of the start of the Nations Championship.<\/p>\n Erasmus will analyse England very closely during their Six Nations campaign, while he will play his cards close to his chest ahead of the first Test of the year.<\/p>\n The Nations Championship will see the Six Nations teams of England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales represent the Northern Hemisphere.<\/p>\n They will face a Southern Hemisphere group made up of the SANZAAR nations Argentina, Australia, New Zealand<\/a> and South Africa, joined by two invitational teams in Japan<\/a> and Fiji.<\/p>\n Tournament organisers describe it as a \u2018groundbreaking competitive format\u2019 that puts the event on a global stage.<\/p>\n After the six rounds of regular-season matches, a finals series will be contested over three days, with each team matched against its equivalently ranked team in the other pool to decide placements.<\/p>\n All finals in 2026 are to be held at Twickenham Stadium in London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The opening match of the historical Nations Championship tournament is shaping up to an epic showdown between two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-391708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391708","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=391708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}