The South Africa rebuild in 11 months as World Cup favourites eye tries ahead of England crunch

The Springboks stereotype is of huge forwards laying waste to all before them like a marauding green and gold army of stone giants with little in the way of fluent attacking rugby.

Easy to pigeonhole and easier still to take against. An identification parade of world rugby’s bad guys would put South Africa front and centre. But something strange has happened in recent times. There has been a metamorphosis. The South African side that will confront England has that base element of muscle which is the Springbok DNA – but they can play too. With Manie Libock zipping passes and Cheslin Kolbe doing his hot-shoe shuffle, they have become strangely loveable.

Not everyone feels this way – as the death threat Boks scrum half Cobus Reinach had to deal with after the quarter-final victory over France showed – but for the non-unhinged the evolution has been a surprising treat. The architect of everything Springbok is director of rugby Rassie Erasmus and his explanation is fascinating.

After South Africa lost to France 11 months ago, Erasmus decided on the radical revamp of the side’s approach. He said: “We had to adapt and try to score tries through more open, fluent, running rugby. As a team we don’t want to be this wonderful playing rugby team that the whole world loves but we do want to score tries. Post that last French game I tweeted a few times. I said we’d have to adapt and make things clearer for refs, we can’t just rely on mauling, scrumming and close-contact work.

“Those aspects are tough to referee and if the ref gets two decisions wrong and you get four opportunities, 50 per cent are gone.

“If you fire shots in open play, it’s clearer decisions.”