Springboks' golden era set to endure after careful forward planning by Erasmus and Saru

Is this the greatest rugby team of all time? The debate continues to rage, in the wake of the Springboks’ second consecutive Rugby Championship title triumph.

No team has won more major titles during a specific period.

Since 2018, the group coached by Rassie Erasmus and led by Siya Kolisi has won back-to-back World Cups, a series against the British & Irish Lions, and three Rugby Championships — the most recent tournaments back to back.

Are they better than the great All Blacks side of the 2010s, which clinched back-to-back World Cups (2011 and 2015) and won 90% of their Tests between global tournaments, yet failed to win a Lions series (2017) outright?

Back in 2023, the more objective commentators and fans may have answered in the negative. But since the start of the 2024 season, the Boks have claimed 18 victories in 22 Tests for a win-record of 82%.

They have taken their game forward since winning their most recent World Cup title, blending a traditional South African approach with a more potent attack.

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that they will continue to improve in the lead-up to the 2027 World Cup — where they will attempt to secure an unprecedented hat-trick of global titles — and before the subsequent tournament in 2031.

Bearing fruit

The structures that were implemented across the age groups more than a decade ago are starting to bear fruit, while more recent developments are taking the game in South Africa to the next level.

With this in mind, there’s good reason to believe that there may be more success to come for the Boks and other national teams.

Junior Bok boom

Last year, the Junior Boks finished seventh at the World Rugby U20 Championship staged in South Africa.

Another failure in an age-group tournament was followed by a familiar question: Why is a country with one of the biggest pools of schoolboy talent struggling to perform at the global showpiece?

To be fair, Erasmus and the South African Rugby Union (Saru) went out of their way to address the flaws in the system when they implemented the Elite Player Development programme in 2015.

The initiative aimed to boost transformation at the higher levels, and to ensure that fewer players fell through the cracks after school.

Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Damian Willemse — two of the Boks’ best players in the recent Rugby Championship — are routinely held up as the examples  for the Elite Player Development programme, given their progression from the age-group level to the senior national side.

The appointment of Dave Wessels as SA Rugby’s general manager for high performance in 2024 was a big step forward, as was the acquisition of Kevin Foote as Junior Boks coach.

While there were some growing pains in the U20 Rugby Championship staged earlier this year, the Junior Boks went on to win the World Rugby U20 Championship for the first time since 2012.

The story doesn’t end there, though.

Landmark victory

Since the landmark victory in Italy this past June, a host of Junior Boks have featured for their respective teams in both the Currie Cup and United Rugby Championship.

Skipper Riley Norton and loosehead prop Olly Reid (both Western Province and the Stormers), winger Cheswill Jooste (Bulls), Bathobele Hlekani (Sharks) and Haashim Pead (Lions) are just some of the young guns who have made an impression in their first season of professional rugby.

Saru can’t be accused of resting on its laurels, either.

Anyone who followed the recent schoolboy rugby season or major provincial tournaments such as the U18 Craven Week will know that there is some outstanding talent coming through the ranks.

Foote has been working closely with the SA U18 teams since August, and will continue to monitor these players in the lead-up to 2026 season. The Junior Boks will be gunning for their first U20 Rugby Championship, and will be looking to replicate the senior side by going back to back in the global tournament.

Meanwhile, New Zealand rugby ponders the way forward after the All Blacks finished a second successive season without the Rugby Championship title, and following the New Zealand U18 side’s 81-48 and 55-33 losses to Australia in recent weeks.

Pipeline to the Boks

Erasmus has already identified three title-winning Junior Boks who have the potential to play for the senior national team in the next few years.

Jooste, Hlekani and Pead trained with the Bok squad before the Rugby Championship, as Erasmus looked to expose the trio to South Africa’s systems and culture. Don’t be surprised if one or two of these players tour with the Boks when they play five Tests in Europe this November.

Erasmus is building a squad for the 2027 World Cup and looking to strike the necessary balance between youth and experience.

The 2025 Rugby Championship was something of a watershed, in that several youngsters — Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Canan Moodie, Ethan Hooker and Jan-Hendrik Wessels are all 24 or younger — received more responsibility.

That said, the Bok coach will need to double down on this approach in the coming years if he wants to give a larger group of youngsters the necessary experience before the global showpiece in Australia.

Erasmus may extend his contract to the subsequent World Cup, which will be staged in the United States in 2031.

By then, Feinberg-Mngomezulu and others will be in their late twenties, while the current crop of Junior Boks, and other recent graduates, should be well established within the set-up.

With the right guidance over the coming seasons, some of the schoolboy stars of today — Markus Muller scored 36 tries for Paarl Gymnasium in 2025 — could be in the mix for the 2031 World Cup squad.

More success to come

As much as the Boks have achieved over the past eight years, there’s reason to believe there is more success to come.

The recent Rugby Championship showed that South Africa has the young talent to offset the loss of a few decorated veterans in the lead-up to the 2027 World Cup.

While the global tournament in Australia remains the priority, it’s good to see that Erasmus and Saru are taking a broader view, and that the wider structures are receiving due attention.

South African rugby lost momentum towards the end of the last golden era (2004 to 2009), and that era of prosperity was followed by a period of stasis, which was in turn followed by the worst two seasons in Bok history (2016 and 2017).

If SA Rugby remains on its current trajectory, it will avoid the mistakes of its predecessors and ensure that this golden era continues for many years yet.

And if the Boks continue to build on their recent successes, they will settle the GOAT debate once and for all. DM