All Blacks hooker Codie Taylor, blood gushing down his forehead during the opening stages of the first half in Baltimore…

That might be the enduring image from Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry for me.

Because the Boks won this competition through pure, brutal physicality and then later, as was evident in the Baltimore Test, with attacking, ball-in-hand rugby.

Kurt-Lee Arendse’s try is a perfect example.

New Zealand might be much improved under Dave Rennie, but ultimately the Springboks showed why they are the current back-to-back Rugby World Cup champions — and are now unequivocally showing they can do it between World Cups too.

Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry between the Springboks and All Blacks was an unanimous success…

Hopefully, the Rugby Championship doesn’t get pushed aside for it to continue, because these are two great competitions appreciated by the South African rugby-watching public.

The next one is in 2030 in New Zealand, and I am going to do my darndest to get there.

So, Australia?

It’s a bit like the fixture against Argentina. In and of itself, it makes no difference whether we win or lose this…

There’s nothing on the line.

Except maintaining our good relationship with the Aussies — and the Argies too…

Rassie has mentioned this a few times: respecting and maintaining our relationship with these two countries and not wanting them to get left behind so we can have our private party with the All Blacks.

Right, back to the Wallabies game…

Look, I’ve watched a fair amount of Wallabies rugby. I mean, I live in Australia.

And truth be told, they can be quite good one week and downright abysmal the next.

Joe Schmidt got them moving in the right direction, but the former Ireland coach was always holding the seat temporarily, and I think that kind of thing would have hurt their preparation for the World Cup next year.

The big question is: are the Wallabies good enough to hurt the Boks?

Well, that depends…

Games in Australia are almost like home games for South Africa, and I expect the crowd in Perthfontein to be full of green jerseys.

So, home-ground advantage might go out the window.

They’ve had a couple of weeks off after playing two games apiece against Japan and Argentina respectively. And look, while that certainly might have been good for new coach Les Kiss to get his methods across, we’ve just played four Tests against the All Blacks and gotten better and better every week.

You can’t really compare the two.

Luckily for the Wallabies, the Boks will drastically change their side.

I expect up to 12 or 13 changes, with guys like Handré Pollard, Paul de Villiers, Canan Moodie, Aphelele Fassi and others getting a run-out.

As we have seen in the past, squad rotation has disrupted our flow a tad.

But honestly, despite making lots of changes, the Boks should be too good.

I think there’s going to be momentum carried over from the All Blacks series that will take us all the way to the Nations Championship and beyond.

If you compare the Boks to last year, by the time the end-of-year tour to Europe came along, they were unstoppable.

I mean, we were beating sides while down to 14 men.

Twice!

For those of you who regularly watch my videos or see my content across social media, you may have noticed that I changed my name from Aussieboks to Cult Rugby.

There are two big reasons behind this.

Firstly, Aussieboks was the local supporters’ community I started in Sydney two years ago. Hence the plural.

That was before I branched out into content creation, which led me down the path I’m on today.

A new name will help me reach some of my broader goals while continuing to make rugby content about the Springboks.

But…

Secondly, turns out you can’t use the word ‘bok’ in your username.

I have some content creator friends who have, allegedly, been contacted and presented with legal letters telling them to stop using it.

So, I’m changing my name to avoid running into a copyright infringement problem.

What does that mean for you?

Absolutely nothing.

I’ll gradually update the branding, but you’ll still get my weekly newsletter just like you have previously.

Until next time,

Rudi

Cult Rugby (formerly Aussieboks)