It was a convincing win over the Barbarians on Saturday for Rassie Erasmus Springboks at Cape Town stadium on Saturday when the hammered the Barbarians 57-7 in the wet.
It was a surprising start to the 2025 season against a good Barbarians side. This showed that the Springboks are at a very good place at the moment and if this match is anything to go by then we have an exciting 2025 to look forward to as Bok fans.
The Boks led 19-0 at halftime and dominated all aspects of the match pinning the Babaas for most of the 80 minutes in their own half. The rain did the Babaas no favors as they could not play their festival type of rugby. The Springboks did not entertain the Babaas in playing a loose game but kept to their structures.
We will certainly not get carried away with this result as it was against a Babaas team who only had about a week together and had to train mostly indoor due to the wet weather the last couple of weeks in Cape Town.
The Boks showed their power early on when they dominated the scrums which put the Babaas on the backfoot early on and they would have expected.
There was standout performances from Vincent Tshituka who also scored two tries in the match. At the back the Boks had plenty of class in Fassi, Kolbe and Arendse which helped the Boks to get that early lead through some nice touches from Fassi.
It was a Fassi grubber that led to Kolbe getting over for the Boks second try after Marx score the first try of the match from a dominated maul from the Boks.
The Springboks starve the Babaas from the ball and they had to defend for most of that first half.
The Third try for the Boks came from Tshituka to give them the 19-0 lead at halftime.
The rain came harder down in the second half which made it slipper underfoot but Rassie brough on his bomb squad which resulted in Wessels going over but it was again the likes of Kolbe, Kriel that set this one up.
With the scoreboard at 26-0, it looked like a white wash was on the card as the Babaas just did not look like scoring at all.
Arendse put his name on the scorecard with a try which started some 70 meters back, which ended in De Allende kicking one through for Arendse who slide over. Next over the white wash was Lood De Jager who had a cracker of a match after a long layoff.
The Babaas finally got a try when Jaminet founded the whitewash to make the score 40-7.
The Boks however was not finished and Tshituka went over for his second of the match. De Allende was the last man to score to give the Boks a great win to start the season.
Scorers:
Springboks 54 (19) – Tries: Malcolm Marx, Cheslin Kolbe, Vincent Tshituka (2), Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Lood de Jager, Damian De Allende. Conversions: Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu (2), Manie Libbok (5).
Barbarians 7 (0) – Try: Melvyn Jaminet. Conversion: Jaminet.
