Steve Hansen thinks the Springboks' 6-2 bench strategy carries real vulnerability, and the Stormers' heavy defeat to the All Blacks last Friday illustrated exactly why. When the Stormers lost both halfbacks to injury, the absence of a second genuine playmaker on the bench unravelled their structure entirely — the All Blacks turned a contest into a rout. Hansen's point isn't that the Bomb Squad is wrong, but that every team running a 6-2 is consciously accepting that scenario as a known risk, and can't use it as an excuse when it bites.
The piece also highlights how Erasmus has partially engineered a solution through Esterhuizen's hybrid role — effectively giving the Boks a 6-2 and 5-3 bench simultaneously — but Esterhuizen's head injury against Argentina clouds that option ahead of the Rugby's Greatest Rivalry series. Hansen draws on his own experience at Toyota, where a converted fullback gave him similar bench flexibility, to argue that the key calculation is always whether you have a utility player who can cover specialist positions in an emergency. Worth reading for the tactical framing ahead of what promises to be a closely contested series against New Zealand.