LONG READ Pocket rockets who lit up Junior Boks’ WC triumph show stars are aligned in SA game

Speak it in a whisper, but South African rugby is in a rare state of harmony, dare one say the word – ‘cohesion’. Its top professional rugby players may not know whether they are coming or going between the two hemispheres, with their domestic competitions in the north and their international bread-and-butter in the Rugby Championship staged south of the equator, but the stars are moving into an exceptional state of alignment around them.

Strong structural reforms are cementing the senior men’s professional set-up with the women’s game and the age-group teams and there are few crossed wires in the streamlining. Only a fortnight ago the Junior Springboks brought the U20s World Cup back home from northern Italy, their first victory since 2012, and it was rightly celebrated by SA Rugby chief executive Rian Oberholzer in an interview with SportsBoom.co.za:

“The restructuring helped a lot. We focused solely on the structures at the juniors [under 18s and under 20s] and [in] women’s rugby. Bringing in the right people, like [ex-Gloucester supremo] Johan Ackerman and Kevin Foote [from the defunct Melbourne Rebels], made a huge difference.

“We looked at what the DNA of South African rugby is, and it starts at under 18 level. You can’t have one system at under 20s and something entirely different at the senior level.”

Another ex-Melbourne Rebels head coach who has been successfully reintegrated into the South African system, Dave Wessels, ‘worked hard to ensure the under 20s play [just] like the Springboks.’

South Africa is not just getting valuable I.P back, it is returning supercharged by a new experience in a very different setting. Munsterman Felix Jones has just finished a stint as England defence coach, Wessels and Foote both coached the same Australian Super Rugby franchise based in Victoria, while Johan Ackerman probably has the widest professional wing-span of them all, having both played and coached in England for the Northampton Saints and the Gloucester respectively, before moving to Japan with the Urayasu D-Rocks.

The jump from assisting Foote with the triumphant under 20s squad to coaching the Bulls in the URC and Champions Cup represents an easy career hop for the formidable ex-Bulls lock. Oberholzer again: “It is a loss for [the junior set-up], but a win for South African rugby. ‘Ackies’ is staying in the country and will now help grow talent at URC level. We are proud of him and wish him well.”

To that same end, Wessels has also recruited national coaches like Daan Human to help with a growing women’s program. Although the Bulls’ Daisies are the only fully professional outfit right now, a six-team women’s league is in the pipeline, utilising the same structures which generated such dramatic improvement at age-group level.

One of the most impressive aspects of South Africa’s victory at the 2025 Junior World Cup was how readily the partnership of Wessels & Foote found players who could fit the systems and positional profiles being used at senior level by the Bokke.

Stars from the under 20s firmament have meanwhile been picked to add extra lustre to Rassie Erasmus’ senior squad for the Rugby Championship. Hulking back-rower Batho Hlekani and two quicksilver scatbacks, Cheswill Jooste and Hassiem Pead, will join up with the Springboks in Johannesburg, taking part in the same classroom, gym and training sessions as their peers. Erasmus is building ever more linkages into the South African system:

“We try to have three positions deep in experience, understanding the Springbok set-up and [to] get enough youth involved there. If you get three injuries in one position, and that can happen, then you have three more players [to come in].

“We don’t see those guys playing Test matches this year, but we’re getting them used to the environment here and wherever they go for their franchises or their clubs. The three of them know 100% that there’s no chance [of playing for the Springboks in 2025] – unless they really knock down the door and blow us away at training sessions!”

The weakest of South Africa’s four professional franchises, the Lions, will also benefit from the addition of Hlekani and Pead to their ranks, with the flanker transferring from the Sharks and the ‘new Antoine Dupont’ signing on the dotted line for three years. Both under 20 World Cup winners will be joined by Grey College standout Ethan ‘the Tank’ Adams and his schoolmates, scrum-half Sherwin Buys and loosehead prop David Hayidakis. Progress only runs as fast as the weakest link, and South African rugby is infusing the old Transvaal with new blood to quicken the pace.

One of the most impressive aspects of South Africa’s victory at the 2025 Junior World Cup was how readily the partnership of Wessels & Foote found players who could fit the systems and positional profiles being used at senior level by the Bokke. Back in April I wrote a piece highlighting the size difference between South African forwards and backs, reversing the Australasian tendency in the early years of professionalism.

When you play multi-phase continuity rugby like Scotland and Ireland, the backs tend to be bigger and there is less of a differential in weight from the forwards. It is not hard to imagine backs like Bundee Aki and Duhan van der Merwe playing their rugby in the back row, for example.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the emphasis is on much bigger tight forwards, a forward-weighted 6/2 or 7/1 bench, and explosiveness in the back three. The lightest back in the 2025 Six Nations was the flying machine from Union Bordeaux-Bègles, wing Louis Bielle-Biarrey, at a mere 79kg.

South Africa is now following the second of those two models far more closely at age-group level. In the Grand Final against New Zealand, they fielded two starting props both of whom were bigger than Tom Robertson, who represented the senior Wallabies against the British & Irish Lions last weekend. But in the back three and at scrum-half, the emphasis was on extreme speed, agility and elusiveness.

For Cheslin Kolbe, Kurt-Lee Arendse and Edwill van der Merwe, and Grant Williams, read Cheswill Jooste, Jaco Williams, Gilermo Mentoe and Hassiem Pead. Not one of them a biscuit more than 5ft 9in tall and 75 kilos. All four either made RugbyPass doyen Jamie Lyall’s ‘team of the tournament’ or were mentioned honourably in dispatches. That is as good a recommendation as any. As the stalwart Scot observed, “South Africa seem to specialise in the pocket-sized assassins – these remarkable little wingers who defy their size and smite the giants before them.”

At the 2025 Junior World Cup the young Bokke scored a class-leading 38% of their tries from changes of possession, higher even than those historical masters of the turnover score New Zealand, who trailed in a distant second at 32%. The ‘power triangle’ of Mentoe, Williams and Jooste was, more often than not, at the centre of turnover scores, with a little helping hand from Pead:

The first return is by Jaco Williams, the second by Cheswill Jooste. Either kicking the ball away without forethought, or losing it in contact anywhere on the field, was inviting trouble for opponents of the young Boks. Gilermo Mentoe was just as sharp from full-back:

The quick leg cadence, the sudden changes of direction and sharp bursts of acceleration were far too much for most of South Africa’s rivals, and now they will deservedly be trialled under the watchful gaze of the likes of Tony Brown and Rassie himself in senior Bokke camps.

The other area where defences struggled to cope with the incisiveness of the band of lethal ‘smurfs’ from the Republic was at scrum-time. With all the forwards concentrated in the set-piece, the speed and footwork at numbers 9, 11 and 14 was too difficult to contain:

Siya Ndlozi is the left wing finishing two of these tries, and as Lyall commented in his article, “[Jaco Williams] didn’t start the pool opener and might not have been first pick had Siya Ndlozi not torn a hamstring. [It was] another illustration of South Africa’s vast – frankly obscene – depth.”

South African professional rugby players may be spread to all corners of the globe by the mind-bending fusion of domestic commitments in the north and national obligations south of the equator, but a new cohesion is beginning to develop in the Republic underneath and around the pinnacle of the game.

Pead will be the next great Springbok nine in the tradition of Dawie de Villiers, Joost van der Westhuizen and Fourie du Preez.

The success of England and France over the past decade has illustrated the value of using under 20s competition to trigger subsequent success at senior level a few years down the line. Now South Africa is muscling in on the act, and it is creating a production line of small, fleet-footed outside backs primed to take the places of Cheslin Kolbe and Kurt-Lee Arendse when they hang up their boots for good. Then there is Pead, who will be the next great Springbok nine in the tradition of Dawie de Villiers, Joost van der Westhuizen and Fourie du Preez. Young players with promise will get a taste of the full Springbok environment immediately.

South Africa is busy reintegrating coaches with overseas I.P into the system back home and a professional development of the women’s game is afoot. The weaker teams in the URC will be buttressed by the best of the emerging talent. The various parts of South African rugby are talking to each other and finding common ground. It is as if Rassie has been listening to a universe which is chattering about alignment, and telling him: ‘trust me, I know what I’m doing’.