Gavin Rich's post-series column meanders pleasantly across South Africa — literally, he's driving the N1 from Joburg to Cape Town — but the analytical meat sits in a pointed argument: Dave Rennie made a strategic error by repeatedly raising the spectre of Bok scrumming illegalities. John Plumtree, who knows this environment well, told Rich and Brenden Nel on their Talking Boks podcast that Rennie simply handed Daan Human and his loosehead brigade extra fuel — and the scrum that produced the decisive penalty try just before halftime at FNB Stadium was the predictable result. Rich draws the parallel to the 2018 Sandpapergate cricket series, where Australian sledging flipped a switch in the Proteas that never switched back. The broader point: poking South Africans — in any sport — tends to end badly for the poker.
Rich also spends time on the series' cultural moment — Human's press conference turning Verkeerdevlei from a toll plaza into rugby folklore, 87,000 fans chanting 'scrum, scrum, scrum' on cue, and the Malcolm Marx maul that Nick Mallett flagged as a thing of beauty. The mood on the N1 the morning after, he argues, captured something genuine about where South African rugby sits right now. With the series at 2-1, Rich signs off expecting a 3-1 Bok result.