Planet Rugby's Nations Championship Team of the Week for round two features three Springboks — Jesse Kriel at 13, Ruan Nortjé at lock and Zach Porthen off the bench — alongside Pieter-Steph du Toit and Paul de Villiers as runners-up. Handre Pollard, Embrose Papier and Damian Willemse also earn honourable mentions in what the piece calls a 'game for the ages' at Loftus. The Bok selections are framed around clutch execution: Kriel's perfectly-timed grubber gather to seal the win, Nortjé's match-leading 19 tackles and a 40-metre burst out of defence at a critical point in the third quarter, and Porthen's impact cameo despite early scrum discomfort.
The headline individual award, however, goes to Finn Russell — named Player of the Week despite being on the losing side. The piece makes the case that his performance at altitude, against the best defence in the world, returning from two months out, was arguably the finest of his career. For Bok supporters, the Russell framing is worth reading alongside the Springbok selections: it's a reminder of exactly what Loftus had to withstand to grind out the win. Elsewhere, Will Jordan's hat-trick against Italy took him past Doug Howlett's All Blacks try-scoring record, Henry Pollock came off the bench to score three for England, and France's second-half fightback in Brisbane produced one of the round's more striking team performances.