Head coach Rassie Erasmus said the Springboks have not responded negatively to pressure in the past, and shouldn't do so again.
Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus said the team is currently not worried about the favourites tag placed on them ahead of the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia.
He, however, said they might be concerned closer to the tournament, or might lose the tag altogether in the season leading up to it.
The Springboks won the last two World Cups, and a record four so far. They finished the 2025 season with a second back-to-back Rugby Championship title and a second clean sweep of the end-of-year tour in Europe.
They won 13 out of 15 matches to finish top of the world rankings by some margin.
Boks ‘might not even be favourites then’
On Wednesday, they drew Italy, Georgia and Romania in pool B for the 2027 global showpiece. These opponents are ranked 10th, 13th and 22nd in the world, respectively, and South Africa have lost to only one of them in their history – Italy in 2016.
They are easy favourites to top the pool and also to win the World Cup.
“We are thinking of next year first,” Erasmus said. The Springbok coach said the team still had their new-look Autumn Nations Series and Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry Tour on their minds.
The former will see a table, play-offs and final adding structure to the annual end-of-year tour, while the latter has the Boks take on the All Blacks in four Tests next year.
“We are trying to build our team to be really competitive at 2027 but you can lose that favourite tag very quickly, if you have a bad year before the World Cup.”
He said he didn’t think the Springboks had ever responded to pressure negatively. Looking back to their 2-1 series win over the British & Irish Lions, and their 2019 and 2023 World Cup wins when they were ranked in the top three in the world after good seasons.
He said hopefully the Springboks could carry their form into 2026 to maintain that tag. However, “I don’t think tags – favourites or underdogs – bother us at this time. When we get into the tournament, it might. Or we might not even be favourites then.”
