Gavin Rich's wide-ranging column uses the Bok-Barbarians curtain-raiser in Gqeberha as a launchpad for a season preview with some pointed analytical threads. The sharpest is his critique of the four-test Greatest Rivalry series against the All Blacks: Rich argues that staging the deciding game in Baltimore fundamentally undermines the concept. If it's 2-1 to New Zealand heading Stateside, they've already won on South African soil — and if it's 1-all, winning in the USA doesn't mean they conquered the Boks at home. The neutral-venue finale, he contends, guts the integrity of what was marketed as rugby's equivalent of The Ashes. He also flags the Nations Championship with scepticism — Itoje's likely absence from the England squad for Johannesburg is, in his view, a sign of things to come, with big nations managing players through what many still regard as glorified friendlies. Expect Erasmus to do the same when the Boks head to Europe later this year, with one eye firmly on the 2027 World Cup.
Elsewhere, Rich reflects on Scott Robertson's awkward position coaching the Barbarians in the city where he was supposed to arrive as All Black coach for a marquee series — and urges perspective on how that Barbarians game gets judged. On the Bulls-Leinster URC final, he's broadly bullish on the Bulls but frustrated by the scheduling: the two-week gap between semi and final has drained momentum, and the Bulls' decision to fly home rather than stay in Ireland made an already stretched timeline worse. A classic Rich column — personal, opinionated, and packed with enough threads to keep a Springbok supporter reading.