Rating
85
Elite — top 1% of the field · Glicko-2 2108 ±78
Record
50-0-15
76.9% of 65 matches in the last five years
Average margin
+15.4
33.0 for, 17.6 against
Home advantage
+9.0
Points per match better at home
Attack
+29%
33.0 scored per match, against the placed field's average
Defence
+37%
17.6 conceded per match; positive is fewer than average
- Head coach
- Rassie Erasmus
- Captain
- Siya Kolisi
- Union
- SA Rugby
- Emblem
- Springbok
- First match
- South Africa 0–4 British Isles (Cape Town, South Africa; 30 July 1891)
- Most caps
- Eben Etzebeth (141)
- Leading scorer
- Percy Montgomery (893)
- Most tries
- Bryan Habana (67)
- World Cups
- 8, from 1995
- Best World Cup
- Champions (1995, 2007, 2019, 2023)
From Wikipedia, read 2026-08-20. Not an input to any forecast — the rating does not know who is coaching.
Argentina2026-08-08 · away17–10won
Wales2026-07-18 · home43–0won
Scotland2026-07-11 · home42–28won
England2026-07-04 · home45–21won- Wales2025-11-29 · away73–0won
Newest first, from South Africa's own point of view. Home and away are as the record stores them; a fixture the record does not mark neutral is listed as one side's home, which is right for a league round and wrong for a final played at a third ground.
Biggest win: 76-0 v Romania
Heaviest defeat: 22-38 v Australia
Elite — top 1% of the field
Box is the middle half of the ranked field, line is the median, dot is South Africa. The scale is this domain's own and does not compare across the two.
Teams that play alike sit close together. The two axes hold 67% of the variation between teams. Component 1 (45%) rises with more average margin, less points conceded. Component 2 (22%) rises with more high-scoring matches and margin swing.
10 of 45 teams sit too close together to name without covering another team's point, so they are drawn unlabelled. Every dot is still a link to that team, and its name is in the tooltip.
- 1Ireland0.29
- 2Finland1.05
- 3New Zealand1.15
- 4France1.49
- 5England1.51
Distance in the projection above, nearest first.