Castle Lager Rugby Championship: Keo & Zels’ Best of the Best
It’s official: The champion Springboks dominate the Keo & Zels best XV for the 2025 Castle Lager Rugby Championship campaign.
The selection criteria was simple. Players had to be bloody good, consistent and put in WOW performances.
Try as the boys did, they could not find a place for any Los Pumas player, simply because of the quality of individual they did select.
The honourable mentions were plenty. Pumas captain and hooker Julian Montoya misses out because of one Malcolm Marx. The Pumas flankers Kremer and Matero miss out because of giants like Pieter-Steph du Toit and Adri Savea.
Cam Roigard was brilliant against Australia at Eden Park, but only played in two of the six matches. Cobus Reinach was the star No 9, big in the biggest moments and when the Boks needed him to take charge.
We looked for impact, for brilliance and for the strongest of endings to the most compelling Rugby Championship title in the history of the competition.
The Boks won the title, on points differential, which was the first time the competition had ever been decided by points differential.
That points differential was a combination of the 43-10 win against the All Blacks in Wellington and the Boks’ 67-30 win against the Pumas in Durban, which is why Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s shares are so high. He was the differentiator in Durban, with a Springboks individual record 37 points, and he ensured that the Boks only needed four league points for a win in the final match to win the title, and not a try-scoring bonus point win.
The Boks and All Blacks both won four from six matches and finished with 19 league points. Australia were third and Argentina fourth. They both won two Tests, but were in a winning position on four occasions from six.
The Boks dominated the team, especially up front, with the All Blacks the next best and the Wallabies making a world-class contribution.
Keo and Zels’ favourite rugby podcast is the ‘Aftermatch’ with former All Blacks flyhalf Stephen Donald aka Beaver and New Zealand Sky Sports presenter Kirstie Stanway-Thorne.
We’ve included Beaver’s Castle Rugby Championship XV and note that he wants to do a live Podcast from Caprice in Camps Bay during next year’s All Blacks Great Rivalry Tour of South Africa.
We’ll make sure it happens, along with Keo & Zels.
WIN A BREWERIES TOUR WITH CASLTE LAGER, THE SPRINGBOKS & TREAT YOUR BESTIE
*New Zealand’s blindside flanker wears six and the open side seven. In South Africa, the blindside flanker wears 7, which is why Keo & Zels have Pieter-Steph du Toit at No 7 and Beaver has the world’s best player in the No 6 jersey.
The Castle Lager Rugby Championship – all you need to know from the 2025 tournament
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