Ken Borland

At 22-years-old, Elrigh Louw was the baby of the Springbok team at the weekend, making his Test debut off the bench in the city of his birth, but the loose forward was certainly not over-awed as he produced a powerful display in the second-half comeback by the home side against Wales at Loftus Versfeld.

Whether carrying powerfully, making crunching tackles or standing up to the gibberish of Dan Biggar, Louw was influential in the half-hour he spent on the field.

Captain Siya Kolisi praised the Bulls talent afterwards saying, “Elrigh was special, it’s amazing how chilled he was.”

Louw himself exuded the air of someone with a very mature, focused head on his shoulders.

“We were under pressure when I came on, but I knew exactly what I had to do. I was able to enjoy it. I was actually more emotional when I heard I was in the 23 than running on the field,” Louw said after the 32-29 win.

“When I ran on, I knew my goal and I did not think about my emotions. I knew my Pa and Ma would be very emotional though.

“It’s an honour to hear my name mentioned as a Bomb Squad member, but the important thing was I knew exactly what the coaches expected of me,” Louw said.

The superb attack that resulted in Cheslin Kolbe’s crucial 65^th-minute try that closed Wales’ lead to just two points would see Louw go perilously close to scoring himself under the poles after a storming run.

“I just had one thing in mind and that was to dot the ball down on my debut, but Wales tied my shoelaces together quite well in the end,” Louw laughed.

He was more serious when taking co-responsibility for the rolling maul try the Springbok forwards conceded in the 77^th minute as Wales levelled the score at 29-29 with two forwards in the sin-bin.

“We will definitely go and have another look at that and what went wrong. For our pack that was not acceptable at all,” Louw said with a face that must have resembled the one he had whenever he was caught being naughty at Hoerskool Transvalia not that long ago.

But one of the nicest features of the weekend thriller in Pretoria was the birth of another new Springbok career that is sure to go a long way.

Having gambled and lost with his selection of Elton Jantjies at flyhalf, Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber bravely tried to limit the damage to his player’s confidence after the first Test against Wales at Loftus Versfeld.

Jantjies endured a miserable first half of skewed kicks out-of-hand, missed shots at goal and a dropped ball that led to a try, and was substituted before the start of the second half with the Springboks 18-3 down. Barring a few exceptions, the whole team had been sub-par in the first half, but with the help of pugnacious input from the bench, they staged a stirring comeback to win 32-29.

It is only right, though, that Nienaber stand up for Jantjies because the player was put in an invidious position by being selected for the first Test with, as the coach himself said after the game, “less than 30 minutes of game-time this year”.

I can understand why the risk was taken with Jantjies, who has only just recovered from a shoulder injury and whose club did not make the playoffs of Japan’s Rugby League One. The 31-year-old has also had the mental stress of being charged with malicious damage to property and contravention of the Aviation Act to deal with, before those charges were withdrawn after he agreed to pay for the damage he caused to an aeroplane flying back from Turkey.

Flyhalf is one of the few areas where the Springboks are lacking depth and the management were obviously planning ahead in case first-choice Handre Pollard suddenly gets injured. If Jantjies then had to come in and play with so little rugby under his belt, it could have been even worse.

The World Cup winner does now at least have 40 minutes of game-time, and hopefully the trauma of it has not dented his confidence too much.

Nienaber tried to sugarcoat his replacement as being because “he had given everything”, but when he said “he hasn’t played any rugby” he was closer to the reason why.

Despite the fan furore, Jantjies is still a player who has much to offer the Springboks. What he is capable of when in form definitely adds some attacking spark to a team which, for long periods of the first half against Wales, looked desperately in need of some offensive verve.

How he bounces back from this calamitous showing is what matters now.

First-half frustrations

The Springboks put on a wretched first-half display as they returned to playing in front of a capacity crowd at home. And they only grew more frustrated as the Wales pack, splendidly cohesive and determined, stymied their rolling mauls and stood up in the collisions. The home side barely fired a shot despite enjoying enough territory and possession. The maul – largely nullified by Wales – and speculative kicks seemed to be their only attacking weapons.

Elton Jantjies had a particularly poor time. His kicks out of hand were often miscued, including one penalty that went touch-in-goal. He also missed a couple of shots at goal and spilled the ball that led to Rees-Zammit’s second try.

Wales, on the other hand, were clinical in punishing whatever mistakes the Springboks made in their own half, with rampant wing Louis Rees-Zammit scoring twice.

Back from the dead, impetus from the bench

Trailing 3-18 at halftime and wondering where their next points would come from, the Springboks certainly came out with fire in their bellies, no doubt after a roasting from coach Jacques Nienaber.

Their maul was revitalised thanks to greater purpose, but especially because they introduced some variation with peels off the side to split the Welsh defence.

Willie le Roux had replaced Elton Jantjies from the start of the second half and brought some direction to the backline. But the real difference came up front where the bomb squad forwards came on and smashed. The lift in intensity was palpable and debutant Elrigh Louw made a storming run into the shadow of the poles to help set up Cheslin Kolbe’s crucial try.

Dependable Damian, desperate Dan

With Jantjies off, South Africa did not really have an ace goalkicker on the field for the second half, but Damian Willemse stepped up admirably. Solid in general play at fullback and then rotating well with Le Roux at flyhalf, as well as providing some slick attacking touches, Willemse kicked two conversions, including one from the touchline, which was crucial in a tight game.

Never mind his moment of glory, stepping up to take the angled penalty after the final hooter that won the game and spared the Springboks’ blushes after they conceded a maul try to a pack that had two forwards in the sin-bin.

This year has seen the talented Willemse blossom as a highly dependable performer.

Wales captain Dan Biggar, by comparison, had an evening that rivalled Jantjies’ for awfulness. He seemed to be having a running battle through the match with the Springboks and the referee, was yellow-carded in the second half, and then it was his deliberate knock-on which gave South Africa their matchwinning penalty.

Wiese: Prim and powerful

Eighthman Jasper Wiese was a deserved man of the match. One of the few Springboks to shine in their disjointed first half, he was a phenomenal ball-carrier, averaging four metres per carry, and made some crunching tackles. It was also most pleasing that all his ferocity did not come at the cost of his discipline. Wiese has conceded several penalties in the past, but on Saturday night he was prim and proper and kept his nose clean.

Assistant coach Mzwandile Stick says the Springboks will be inspired by the past – both their’s and that of Wales – when the two nations of great rugby tradition meet in the first Test at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday evening.

For the Springboks, with their eyes on defending their World Cup crown next year, they are repeating some of the rebuilding process they did in 2018, a year before their incredible heroics in the global showpiece in Japan.

But they also know how Wales are feeling as their current situation is a bit like South Africa’s in 2018. Stick had already been with the Springboks as a backline coach under Allister Coetzee, but when the team endured a 33% win-rate in 2016, he was made a scapegoat and axed.

One of Rassie Erasmus’s first acts as director of rugby in 2018 was to reappoint the former Sevens star to the Springboks and put him in charge of attack and skills.

“We can compare this time to 2018, when Rassie and Jacques Nienaber came back and we started building for the 2019 World Cup,” Stick said at the Springboks’ Montecasino hotel on Friday.

“It’s similar now because we again have a lot of young faces and we want them to learn from the senior guys while we are still winning. It’s very important to build in the right space and that is a winning environment.

“But we’ve been No.7 in the world too, so we know how Wales are feeling at No.9. But we knew that if we could beat the All Blacks in 2018 then there would be a lot of forgiveness, even though we only had a 50% win record overall.

“It let us breathe a bit. We were desperate and we know very well that Wales will be too and they will come hard at us. They are stubborn and will not go away,” Stick said.

Since losing 20-11 to Wales in Cardiff in November 2018, the Springboks knocked the Red Dragons over 19-16 in their World Cup semi-final in October 2019 and then beat them 23-18 on their 2021 end-of-year tour.

Elton Jantjies slotted an 80^th-minute penalty that day to seal the victory and this time the Springboks are relying on the 31-year-old flyhalf to start the game rather than be the finisher.

“Elton is one of the key players in our system, he’s been with us for years,” Stick said. “Handre Pollard just joined us on Sunday, while Elton has trained with us for three weeks.

“There have been a couple of new things we have introduced in terms of how we want to play, especially in attack and our kicking game, and Elton has had more training of that on the field.

“There’s no first or second choice for us at flyhalf, they are both key for us at any given time. We know Elton is always ready and we can pick him without hesitation because he trains very hard and is very professional.

“In terms of match fitness, both of them have about 100 minutes of rugby under their belts. Elton also has leadership skills at No.10, he was one of the key leaders for the Lions when they played in three Super Rugby finals,” Stick pointed out.