Springboks mastery of basics is its own kind of torture

The South African rugby team are currently touring their home country to visit the people that they represented during their deserved World Cup victory.

South Africa overcame New Zealand in a gripping final to beat their rivals to their fourth World Cup triumph. Both teams are tournament veterans and knockout rugby maestros. They both lost to higher ranked teams in the pool stages, Ireland and France, before crossing over and beating those teams in the quarter-finals.

South Africa have now gone back-to-back in the tournament. They've become experts at building their team to peak at the right time and in the right mindset for tournament rugby. Last time round in 2019, they lost to New Zealand in the pool stages before going on to lift the Webb Ellis trophy. This time, they lost to Ireland but beat three of the top five teams along the way to a historic win.

South Africa have been intriguing to follow since their last World Cup victory. Throughout the Lions tour and beyond, Rassie Erasmus has been the centre of attention, not always for the right reasons, but he’s been capturing the rugby media and public regularly.

Rassie and Jacques Nienaber do their own thing, they’re brave in their decision making and ideas around the game and ignore the status quo. The rugby community has shuddered at some of their ideas, most notably the 7:1 split of forwards and backs which they trialled when they hammered New Zealand at Twickenham in a warm up game.

They challenge teams psychologically, then they go out and challenge them both physically and emotionally during the 80 minutes of torture that they impose on the opposition during the match.

South Africa have brought ingenuity and abstract thoughts to the game, as well as their South African