Rassie Erasmus gives preliminary Springboks report card for 2025

The Boks' season will culminate against Wales in Cardiff on Saturday, when they will be looking to complete their end-of-year European tour with five wins from five. 

Having gotten off to a shaky start against Australia and New Zealand in the Rugby Championship earlier on, Erasmus believes the team has grown in leaps and bounds as they round of the year with their number-one world ranking already solidified. 

"I think the big thing for us this year specifically – we never look at world rankings because it's actually confusing, if you don't 100 percent understand it, and we made a bit of a study about it this year and we really wanted to end in the top four teams," said Erasmus.

"Well, ending number one is fantastic, but the interesting thing will now be when the [World Cup] draw gets done to see what was the benefits of being number one, two and three in the world rankings – we're not quite sure.

"It looks like you can get Australia [in the pool phase] in Australia if you end number one, but I think our first goal was to try and be number one or two in the world at the end of this year, and then [grow] player depth, experience and evolve our game a little bit.

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"Certainly there were backward steps – the first game against Australia, the first game against New Zealand, and the Barbarians wasn't a test match, so we didn't have an easy ride.

"And next year we're coming back again to play Ireland and France here, and obviously England, Scotland and Wales in South Africa.

"So I think we've learnt a lot about ourselves, but our game can definitely improve a hell of a lot more in certain areas, but overall I think goals achieved, but then again we can throw everything away with a bad performance on Saturday."