The match that decides who hunts and gets hunted in Baltimore
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: The third Test at FNB Stadium isn’t just another rung on the ladder to Baltimore – it’s the hinge on which the entire series turns, and Siya Kolisi and Mzwandile Stick made that brutally clear in their pre-match remarks.
For Kolisi, the message was simple and uncompromising: the Springboks are not travelling to the United States to settle for a drawn series.
After losing the opener and fighting back to level in Cape Town, the captain framed this Soweto clash as a “playoff” game. The kind you must win to control your own destiny. With the Freedom Cup and broader national pride on the line on Saturday, the Boks’ objective is to take the series lead on home soil, not to hand New Zealand a 2-1 narrative to carry across the Atlantic.
“We want to win the series; we’re not playing to draw the series,” the captain said, adding, “We’ve got a lot to defend. It’s not just the trophy for the tournament, but also the Freedom Cup.
”It’s something that we want to keep. So, we don’t want to draw the series; we’re going there to try and win the game.
“We’re going to play rugby the way we know how to play rugby, and we know how to win games,” he reiterated.
“So, we’re not taking it lightly in any way; we know how important the game is, because our ultimate goal is to win the series, not to draw it. And I’m sure they have the same mindset too.”
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#NEWS: A lot on the line for the Boks https://t.co/9fwfkcVdfV
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Stick took that a step further, highlighting the psychological stakes that often get overlooked. He pointed out that if the All Blacks win in Soweto, they will leave South Africa able to claim they won the series 2-1 on South African turf – a powerful story in their favour heading into Washington.
“What we don’t realise, if you listen to their media, is that if they win tomorrow, for example, they will claim that they beat South Africa 2-1 in South Africa. So, they will own the rights. We have to protect the series in South Africa in the sense of them not winning 2-1,” the coach stated.
In his view, Saturday’s result effectively decides who is playing to win the competition in Baltimore and who is playing merely to avoid losing it. The team that lifts the trophy in Soweto doesn’t just gain a series lead; it seizes the momentum and the narrative.
Stick and Kolisi also underlined the need to play their own game against an All Blacks side expected to bring serious tempo and running rugby.
But Test rugby is not just played on the field; it is played in the archive, in the highlights package, in the line that gets repeated for the next twenty years. A 2-1 series win in South Africa is the kind of sentence that outlives everyone involved.
It becomes a stick to beat the next generation of Springboks with. Ask anyone who has had 1937 recited to them at a braai (when the Springboks toured New Zealand and won the historic test series 2-1, becoming the first-ever visiting team to win a series on All Blacks soil), or Sean Fitzpatrick’s 1996 side’s series win over Gary Teichmann’s Springboks.
Stick’s point is that the All Blacks are not merely chasing points; they are chasing a permanent line in the ledger.
Which brings us to the elephant in the departure lounge. The Greatest Rivalry series is having its final act staged in Washington.
Nobody in either camp will complain publicly about having to travel together on a chartered flight to Baltimore, and there are good commercial reasons for it. Rugby needs America more than America needs rugby.
But it does give Stick’s remarks a certain edge. There is something almost defensive in the insistence on protecting what a South African home series means, at the exact moment the series is being exported.
That, more than anything, explains why both camps are treating this weekend as the real final.
Whatever happens in the States, the emotional decider is being played on home ground. Kolisi and Stick both know it. So, one suspects, do the All Blacks.
