Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry tour starts at Ellis Park

Ellis Park, the first of a four-Test series, is where the on-field talking will happen between the Springboks and All Blacks. Forget much of what has preceded the pending occasion over the past two months.

Remember two matches: The Springboks Nations Championship opener against England at Ellis Park, won 45-21 by the Boks and the All Blacks final home Nations Championship hit-out against Ireland at Auckland’s Eden Park, won 40-21 by New Zealand.

Those are the two relevant matches when assessing the qualities and prospects of the sport’s best two teams, current and historically.

Very little can be taken from South Africa’s wins against Scotland, Wales and Argentina. Equally, the All Blacks’ tour matches against the Stormers, Sharks and Bulls have offered intrigue, entertainment and opportunity, but no reliable guide to what happens when the whistle blows at Ellis Park.

The All Blacks beat the Stormers 38-21, the Sharks 54-0 and the Bulls 50-19. They used 41 players.

Those matches were rehearsals because the players both coaches considered essential to the toughest assignment were wrapped in cotton wool, massaged through carefully allocated minutes and prepared for Johannesburg.

Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus never hid the plan.

“We decided that splitting the squad into two groups will be best for the Springbok team and the players,” he said before Argentina.

After the Boks ground out a 17-10 win in Buenos Aires, Erasmus was even more direct: “I always expected us to look disjointed, having left 15 players back in South Africa.”

That was the point. Argentina was about winning, but also about giving Siya Kolisi, Eben Etzebeth, Lood de Jager, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and others the contact and match conditioning that training cannot provide.

Only Thomas du Toit and Cameron Hanekom from the starting XV that beat England 45-21 started against Argentina. The rest of the England core was at home, resting and preparing for the All Blacks.

Expect the starting XV to largely mirror those fifteen who did not travel to Argentina.

Erasmus has never had to second-guess his preferred starting XV and match 23 for the series opener.

The England selection showed how Erasmus wants to finish. And if there are changes for the All Blacks, they will result from injury to the original selections made before the international season started.

All Blacks coach Dave Rennie was just as deliberate.

“We’ve picked the first four squads for the first four games in Africa,” he said before departure. The first of those four included the opening Test.

Rennie added that the tour matches created “competition for places for that first Test side”. The starting XV was substantially settled; the fiercest competition was for the eight replacements, until injuries and form reopened several calls.

Even this week Rennie acknowledged that “performances (on Saturday) against the Bulls could tilt our thinking”.

The strongest clue about the visitors is in the All Blacks 23 that beat Ireland 40-21 at Eden Park: Ethan de Groot, Codie Taylor and Tyrel Lomax in the front row; Ardie Savea leading from No 8; Cam Roigard and Ruben Love at halfback; Jordie Barrett in midfield; Will Jordan and Damian McKenzie providing the strike.

That combination, in that same unit, has not played in three tour matches in South Africa.

Savea, Roigard and Jordan have not played a match in South Africa. Taylor’s first match was against the Bulls.

They are the spine of the All Blacks leadership.

Erasmus is nine years into leading the Springboks. Rennie is two months and five matches into the job, so the two teams are at different junctures of their 2027 World Cup journey.

Erasmus, brilliantly, has built depth never before experienced in a Springboks squad and Rennie, in a very short time, has created competition within an extended squad.

Both coaches have managed the playing minutes of those cabs first off the rank.

And any informed insight of the series will come, not from what has happened this year pre 22^nd August, but what happens on the 22^nd August at Ellis Park.