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Well, now what?
Tries
Steenekamp (8'), Hooker (13'), Wiese (30'), Louw (42'), Berg (43'), Feinberg-Mngomezulu (45', 62'), Moodie (48'), Esterhuizen (53'), Nortje (68'), Etzebeth (73')
Conversions
Feinberg-Mngomezulu (9', 14', 31', 43', 43', 46', 49', 63', 69')
Well, now what?
Another game, another historic defeat for Wales. They ended 2025 as it had started: with a nilling at the hands of a top 5 level opposition. The difference was that this time the margin was 30 points greater and the venue for the humiliation was their own back yard.
Whatever you want to call it - ineptitude, incompetence or inexperience - the Welsh had it in spades against a foe that is striving for the mantel of greatest rugby team of all time. South Africa did not further that claim in Cardiff; they couldn’t. Their point was made against the All Blacks in Wellington, France in Paris and Ireland in Dublin. This? This was an encore… nay, a curtain call.
Trying to undertake any kind of serious analysis of this game is pointless. Neither side was at full strength - although, South African fans are in desperate need of a reality check if they want to call their 23 in this game ‘weak’ by any measure.
However, we can at least start to review the data we have gathered about Steve Tandy’s Wales now that we are 4 games in. It’s not a disaster, a disaster would have been losing to Japan, but it is as close to a disaster as it could possibly to be.
At a supporter’s Q&A event during the week, former Wales fly-half Dan Biggar - who played under Tandy for the Ospreys - suggested that his former boss had chosen just one area of Wales’ game plan to focus on during his first 4 games: the attack. This is an outrageously generous take.
Firstly, if Tandy is going to persist in loading his Wales teams with player who play club rugby abroad, he cannot waste 4 precious weeks of training with them not laying the fundamental defensive and strategic foundations they will build upon right up until the World Cup.
Secondly, Tandy does not run Wales’ attack: Matt Sherratt does. Sherratt has been in post in one way or another since the Six Nations - that’s 9 games now. True enough, Sherratt is getting a better return from Wales’ attack that his predecessors were, but it has not taken a significant step forward since Tandy came in.
The proof of this is that a) they were nilled by South Africa and b) Wales have scored 4 tries in 4 of their 9 games since Sherratt came in and 3 tries in 2 others. Half of those came before Steve Tandy was appointed.
Tandy is a coach who built his reputation on making immediate positive impacts on defences as was seen with the Waratahs and Scotland. That has not happened with Wales and he has watched his nation concede 200 points in 4 home games.
But this is not to blame Tandy for the mess he and 50,000 people in the Principality Stadium witnessed on Saturday, around 50% of who were Springbok fans. The blame must start with those who appointed him, most notably Dave Reddin, who was caught on camera laughing with a friend in a hospitality box shortly after Wales’ 25th try of the month was conceded.
The only real resistance shown by Wales in this game came from Alex Mannn’s left eye, which stood up to a gouge from Eben Etzebeth. As they players swarmed and grabbed each others collars in the 79th minute, the Springbok fans in the crowd rallied behind their player - unaware of the crime their icon had committed.
The visitors will not have endeared themselves to their hosts with either their jeering or their ‘Welsh lamb on the braai’ signs or the AI generated images of a Springbok leading a Dragon down the streets of Cardiff via a leash wrapped round its neck (which were repeated on hoodie worn by supporters to ground) but it does speak to the ruthless mentality that has allowed this Springbok team to become who they are.
They are a generational team containing world class players who are willing to do whatever it takes to win for their country, motivated by the burning desire to represent their people and put their nation on top of the world, even despite any adversity they may be facing back home.
Oh how Wales fans would love it if their team was the same, but their team’s biggest weakness has always been their mentality. Warren Gatland used to tell stories of how he would ask the golden generation of 2008-2019 to raise their hand if they thought they were world class players and not a single hand would go up. That was a team that used to beat the Springboks regularly.
And so, as the thousands of travelling South African’s partied long into that good night, the Welsh did what their great poet had urged them never to do: they went into it quietly. Just as they have done most nights for the last 2 years.
