Irresistible force: Why the Bok scrum is a national treasure

OPINION: The Springboks delivered their most emphatic set-piece performance of the Rassie Erasmus era en route to claiming a watershed result against Ireland.

The Boks beat Ireland 24-13 this past Saturday to end a 13-year drought in Dublin.

While some critics have bemoaned the Boks’ poor finishing and ultimately a final scoreline that flatters the Irish, there’s more than one reason to celebrate this result as one for the ages.

The win marks South Africa’s first success in the Irish capital since 2012, and the first away victory against Ireland since Erasmus took charge of the side in 2018.

While the Boks squandered more scoring chances than they finished on Saturday, they managed to outscore Ireland by four tries to one.

That stat, as much as an 11-point victory, highlights how far this group has come.

The big story, of course, is the Boks’ set-piece performance.

Those who watched the scrum battle at the Aviva Stadium will agree it was a case of the perfect storm.

The Boks came into the contest with the superior scrum, and on Saturday, they found a referee in Matthew Carley who was willing to reward dominance.

The situation was certainly exacerbated by an early red card for lock James Ryan, and on this occasion, there was nowhere for serial scrum offenders such as loosehead prop Andrew Porter to hide.

Ireland conceded 18 penalties overall. The better teams rarely concede more than 10 or 11 penalties a match, but on Saturday, Andy Farrell’s charges leaked as many penalties at the scrum and maul.

While official figures are difficult to come by, I counted 11 offences across the two departments, with Ireland conceding a whopping eight penalties at the scrum and a further three at the maul.

These are unusual numbers, even for a side as powerful as the Boks.

As dominant as they’ve been at the scrum over the past few years, South Africa have never forced an opponent to haemorrhage eight penalties.

Wales conceded six last November, while Scotland leaked as many in the 2023 World Cup pool match. Before Saturday, those performances – and perhaps the set-piece display against England in the 2019 World Cup Final – would have been the high watermark.

And yet, the penalty numbers don’t tell the full story of the Boks’ dominance in Dublin.

There were a further three instances where Carley put his arm out to indicate scrum advantage – and in two cases, the Boks went on to score tries through Cobus Reinach and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu.

The pressure told on Ireland, with Porter and reserve loosehead Paddy McCarthy serving time in the sin-bin for repeated scrum offences.

Carley awarded the Boks a penalty try on the stroke of full-time, after the umpteenth Irish offence.

The Bok players and coaches will remember this performance for a long time.

While some critics and fans have already described it as one of the most forgettable spectacles in recent memory, there was plenty to love and celebrate about the set-piece performance, in terms of the way the coaches identified an Irish weakness and the manner in which the Bok forwards ruthlessly exploited it.

Erasmus will be thrilled with the outcome, and when you get down to it, every coach and player did their part.

Tony Brown will be satisfied with an attack that scored four tries and Jerry Flannery with a defence that limited Ireland to 13 points.

Deon Davids and Duane Vermeulen will acknowledge that the Boks produced their finest line-out and maul performance of the season.

Scrum coach Daan Human will receive the bulk of the credit, and rightly so.

The Bok scrum has delivered some impressive showings already this season,

Who could forget the awesome set-piece that sent the All Blacks hurtling back towards their own goalposts at the end of the clash at Eden Park?

But the performance in Dublin was something else.

Overall, Erasmus will be impressed by how the plan was executed.

While it was slow and at times difficult to watch, the players stuck to the set-piece task, knowing that the tactic would pay off in the long term.

The Boks won the first of their eight scrum penalties in the 28th minute. From there, they continued to apply the pressure, and four minutes later, Reinach crossed the tryline.

In the lead-up to half-time, Erasmus took the extraordinary decision to replace props Boan Venter and Thomas du Toit with Gerhard Steenekamp and Wilco Louw – which as some experts have observed, are more destructive scrummaging props.

The Bok scrum fired to force another series of penalties, which resulted in a yellow card for Porter and eventually a penalty try for the visitors.

The period between the 45th and 63rd minute was equally one-sided.

With Carley holding out his hand to indicate a penalty advantage at the scrum, Feinberg-Mngomezulu eased through the Irish defence to score a try.

At the time, it was marked as a piece of individual brilliance, but credit must go to the forwards for setting such a dominant platform.

Thereafter, the Bok forwards forced a maul penalty, and four more scrum penalties.

It was at the end of this period of pressure where McCarthy was asked to take a seat on the naughty chair.

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There’s been a lot of talk about the scrum this season, how World Rugby has gone out of its way to depower this set-piece, and how referees have been instructed to treat it as a restart rather than a bonafide contest.

And yet here we are, 14 Tests into the Boks’ season, and the South Africans continue to average three scrum penalties per game.

Experts will mark the 2025 average as particularly impressive, as the Boks have had to become even more dominant than before – in terms of winning the hit and showing the best picture to the referee – to earn the desired reward.

Few teams have been able to live with the Boks in this area in 2025, and Human and Erasmus may remember the performances against New Zealand in Auckland (four scrum penalties), Argentina in London (five) and France in Paris (three) as highlights.

That the Boks have taken their scrum performance – as well as their overall game – to the next level this season in spite of Erasmus’ rotation policy is particularly impressive.

It’s interesting to note that 18 different front-row combinations have been used across 14 Tests in 2025.

Those selections include Test newcomers such as Boan Venter, Zachary Porthen, Asenathi Ntlabakanye and Neethling Fouché, and account for the use of Jan-Hendrik Wessels and Marco van Staden – who usually feature at hooker and flank respectively – in different positions.

Ox Nché, Malcolm Marx and Thomas du Toit have started the most Tests as a combination (four) while Johan Grobbelaar, Gerhard Steenekamp and Wilco Louw (three) have played the most from the bench.

While Nché and Marx were rightly acknowledged with World Rugby Player of the Year nominations – with the latter claiming the prize after another stellar showing in Dublin – Louw deserves credit for the central role he’s played in South Africa’s second-half surges this season.

As the respected English journalist and analyst Charlie Morgan recently observed, the Boks aren’t slowing down, and it’s scary – at least for opposition teams – to consider how much better they might be at the World Cup in Australia in two years’ time.

While the team has room to grow across the respective positions, it’s especially encouraging to note how much stronger they could be in the front row when several players return to action in 2026.

Steven Kitshoff’s injury enforced retirement on the eve of the 2025 season was a blow to the Boks’ loosehead depth, as was the serious injury to Nché earlier this month.

The Boks have managed to absorb those losses, thanks in large to the contributions of Venter and the return of Steenekamp, and the smart management of Erasmus.

That said, they will be stronger for Nché’s return next season.

It remains to be seen if Frans Malherbe will be back, after missing the entire 2025 season due to a back injury.

The 34-year-old could still add value to the front-row contingent in the lead-up to the next World Cup, although the 2027 tournament may be a bridge too far for ageing tightheads like Trevor Nyakane (36) and Vincent Koch (35).

In a sense, the recent front-row injuries have proved a blessing in disguise, as younger players like Venter and Wessels, as well as more established players like Louw and Du Toit have received more game time in big matches.

There’s a chance that the Erasmus will have three or even four outstanding front-rows to choose from in 2027 – all with the necessary power and experience – by the time South Africa touch down in Australia.

2025 has been a year to remember, but there’s plenty of reasons to suggest that the set-piece will be even more destructive in the years to come.