Caelan Doris and three other South Africa vs Ireland talking points

What an epic we were treated to in Durban on Saturday. The atmosphere at Kings Park was tremendous and the calibre of the rugby on show was proper Test match fare. Here are the RugbyPass talking points coming out of Ireland’s last-gasp 25-24 win over South Africa:

Why two and not three?

No disrespect to minnows Portugal, who will surely love their outing next weekend in Bloemfontein versus the Springboks, but it is a shame that next weekend isn’t a series-deciding third South Africa-Ireland encounter. 

Draws are hollow in rugby and while the series in New Zealand and Australia had two-nil wins confirmed for the All Blacks and the Wallabies versus England and Wales, having South Africa-Ireland and Argentina-France conclude deadlocked at one win apiece is very annoying.

Imagine the incredible hype that a third Boks-Irish match-up would generate in the days ahead. Rugby needs as many shots in the arm as it can get to grow its appeal beyond its avid fans, not stalemate outcomes.

Look at how terrific it was in 2022 when it was a three-game series format and the All Blacks-Irish, Wallabies-English, Springboks-Welsh and Pumas-Scottish affairs all enjoyed a third Saturday to settle the result after they were all poised at one-all after two matches.

A share of the spoils is what the record books will now show for this 2024 Boks-Irish series, leaving very much undecided that pent-up debate in recent weeks and months over who currently is the world’s No1 side.

That’s frustrating but nothing can be done with Ireland jumping on a plane home on Sunday and South Africa planning to release their front-line players on Wednesday for a 10-day break while the fringe is let loose on their Iberian visitors in Bloem'.

It won’t be until November 2025 when another #RSAvIRE fixture is likely pencilled into the calendar. By that stage these two champion teams will have evolved and developed and won’t be the same as the rivalry that has recently existed. That’s a real pity.

Seven-week roller coaster

Proper Irish fans who have the health of the overall game in their heart will be thrilled that it was Ciaran Frawley who emerged as the match-winning hero. There is, unfortunately, a massive imbalance in the player development conveyor belt in Ireland, with too many emerging from the private fee-paying schools pathway and very few making it via the grassroot clubs route due to the unevenness of the late teenage rugby they are exposed to.

Frawley has beaten the odds and while it will seem to rugby aficionados around the world that he has become an overnight success at the age of 26 on the back of his drop goal heroics in a gutsy 21-minute demonstration of out-half play off the bench, his highlights reel cameo was a long time in the making and deserving of recognition.

It was from the Skerries club in North County Dublin where Frawley was spotted and his rise to Leinster and Ireland prominence has been a slow build that now has genuine substance. The cruelty that visited Frawley seven weeks ago in London when he was agonisingly wide with a last-gasp drop goal to win the Champions Cup for his province versus Toulouse could have broken him but this ‘rookie’ has got balls of steel.

His 70th-minute drop goal was a peach, catching the South African goal-line dropout and returning it with interest between the posts. But his reaction to his 77th-minute crosskick which failed to find Garry Ringrose and instead went straight into touch was Johnny Sextonesque.

So many other players would have reacted to that error by being afraid to kick the ball away a second time but what he did after effecting a loop with fellow sub Stuart McCloskey when running with 79th-minute scrum possession from his 22 was sublime, putting in a precision grubber that ended with James Lowe forcing the back-pedalling Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu to carry into touch and give Ireland the attacking lineout that led to the game-winning drop goal.

The moral of this story is that you simply have to get up off the canvas when this sport topples you over. “You can’t be too hard on yourself. Well, you can but you can’t dwell on it too much because we were lucky enough that it wasn’t the last game of the season,” said Frawley post-game, explaining how he managed to move on from his high-profile London miss.

“We had Connacht the week after and had to dust ourselves off pretty quickly and get on with it, that’s life. Look, to come down here to play against the world champions and beat them in their own backyard is unbelievable.”

It sure was. What a brilliant reminder that Ireland stars can emerge from the lesser travelled youths pathway.

Rassie's good grace

Rugby is an amazing game in that no 80 minutes between the same two teams is ever predictable. As a coach, it can leave you feeling the greatest one week and utterly bereft the next. So it turned out with Rassie Erasmus. He was the recipient of so much praise last weekend after their 27-20 Loftus Versfeld win.

Signs of an expanded attack with flankers intriguingly running in the wide channels. Influential bench use with the unleashing of all six forwards in one fell swoop. His admirers liked what they saw and had no hesitation in telling him so.

Seven days on at Kings Park, though, the outlook on his team was very different. Tryless attack. Blunted maul. Rookie full-back. No series sweep. To his immense credit, he took the disappointment with great grace. “You can sit here with a sad face and think out excuses but the best team won on the day,” he admitted.

The in-series thrash talking was over and all that was left was respect for an Irish team that hung tough and levelled the series with an 80th-minute sucker punch for a one-point win against the standard bearers of the one-point win.

While it will be another 17 weeks before we get to see Ireland play when they host the All Blacks in Dublin, Erasmus is now in the thick of the Springboks season and in need of an August 10 response in Australia to get The Rugby Championship off to a winning start once the second-string hit-out versus Portugal is done with.

It’s going to be fascinating to see now Erasmus adapts and changes during that campaign. Blooding players and winning big Test matches at the same time is a difficult balance as he now only too well knows having lost Willie le Roux to a second-minute concussion and seeing Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu getting quite a challenge from the Irish, culminating in his concession of that late, late result deciding lineout.    

“When Willie is there our attack functions a bit better,” he volunteered. “Willie’s vision and feel for the game, he is not the youngest and the fastest anymore but he is definitely somebody who links the two wings and the centres very well with each other.

“It’s sad to lose, not nice, and I know as we are disappointed a lot of the fans will be disappointed as well. I wouldn’t say positives but I will say the experience that Sacha felt against a team which is really well organised and is ranked in the top one, two always in the world the last couple of years, he will take that and will use that going forward.”

Who knows, maybe in another six weeks, as happened with Frawley in seven, Feinberg-Mngomezulu could be the Springboks hero against New Zealand in Johannesburg. Wouldn't that be a brilliant sequel to what unfolded for him in Durban?   

Doris the Lions leader?

It was last November when this writer’s better half came home from a work conference in Dublin with a bulging notebook of leadership pointers from Paul O’Connell. Aside from the usual titbits all speakers serve up at these motivational events, the Ireland assistant hinted that with Sexton retiring as the captain, very few people would predict the unexpected choice set to be named skipper for the 2024 Six Nations.

That left-field appointment never came, Andy Farrell instead decided it best that the established Peter O’Mahony took the responsibility. However, we now know that Caelan Doris was the captaincy punt that Ireland were considering and the back-rower will likely have that job for some considerable time to come. He can also be Farrell’s choice to lead on the 2025 British and Irish Lions tour to Australia.

Doris was by far Ireland’s best player of the South African series, producing two brilliantly consistent performances despite several in-game setbacks that could easily have diluted his influence. In Pretoria, he seemed to have teething issues at times getting his point across to referee Luke Pearce, yet was still firing at the finish.

In Durban, meanwhile, his second-half yellow carding resulted in 10 minutes that his team ‘lost’ 0-9, but he then went on to make the big carry in centrefield to manipulate the South African defence before Frawley struck for glory. How inspiring.

He doesn’t yet get asked much at the post-match briefings. There were just two questions at the eight-minute top table session that Ireland managed, but he produced a killer opening line that suggests he will entertainingly become a very quotable operator.

“Second half felt like a bit of a s**t show at times, that first 20 in particular,” he candidly admitted, holding his hand up for his own naughty step contribution. “I was sitting on the sideline watching some of it unfold not being able to influence and it sort of felt suffocating penalty after penalty.”

You live and learn, though. It’s how a captain earns his stripes and what Doris has picked up over successive Saturdays has laid the foundation for him to potentially become another great Irish leader.