South Africa vs Wales: Locks Eben Etzebeth and Lood de Jager - boyish but brutal Springboks

In their young locks Etzebeth and De Jager, South Africa – who take on Wales in the World Cup quarter-finals on Saturday – have a new generation of second rowers with echoes of the tough, ferocious tradition of yesteryear

South Africa's Eben Etzebeth

Tipping an opponent on his head, placing a forefinger within a dozen inches of a rival’s neck, taking Japan too lightly… for anyone intending to stay alive in this World Cup, the list of “don’ts” has been almost as long as the inventory of social media spats between England players and their critics. As for those simply wanting to stay alive until Sunday, there is just one golden rule: do not, on any account, get on the wrong side of Eben Etzebeth.

Just this week, at the Springboks’ quarter-final camp in Surrey, some brave media type took it upon himself to suggest that the 19st lock from Cape Town was a dead ringer for Borat. To his face. If looks could kill, they probably did. Reports of a New Zealand journalist being vaporised in the grounds of a country house hotel outside Bagshot have yet to be formally denied.

Etzebeth is, to use the popular phrase, a piece of work. So too is his second-row partner Lood de Jager, a baby-faced assassin if ever there was one. The Boks also have an extremely useful engine-roomer on the bench in Pieter-Steph du Toit and are, therefore, in the unusual position of not caring a fig that Victor Matfield, a World Cup-winning forward armed with 120-odd caps and a line-out reputation second to none, is currently incapacitated by a hamstring injury.

lood De Jager in action for South Africa

Wales, who face the two-time champions at Twickenham on Saturday afternoon, are hardly bereft in this department: Luke Charteris and the mighty Alun Wyn Jones demand to be taken seriously. But no country on this rugby earth has a grander second-row tradition than South Africa, where size very definitely matters, and if the Springbok sage Gary Gold is correct in his judgement, the boilerhouse brat pack have put their nation ahead of the game once more and could keep it there for a decade.

“We knew quite a bit about Eben when I was on the coaching staff,” says Gold, who joined the Boks’ back-room team in mid-2008 and was heavily involved in both the ferocious series with the British & Irish Lions in 2009 and the World Cup campaign in 2011. “We thought he was the real deal at an early stage and that’s how he’s turned out. What we didn’t know was that three gems were in the process of being unearthed, rather than one. I am absolutely confident that, God willing on the injury front, they will serve us for the next 10 years.”

The oldest of the three, if not by much – he will turn 24 later this month – Etzebeth is widely considered the latest in a long line of Springbok enforcers: a Moaner van Heerden for the modern age, perhaps, or Bakkies Botha incarnate. You can see the logic.

Consider Botha as the most obvious reference point. Jake White, the coach who took South Africa to the global title in 2007, once said this about his enforcer-in-chief: “As soon as I’m confident Bakkies has done his job and the game is won, I substitute him – partly because I don’t want him to pick up an injury and partly because I don’t want him to do something that injures one of the opposition and lands him in the bin.”

In other words, the Big Man could be Big Trouble.

If Etzebeth has a pretty clean disciplinary record, of which he is justly proud, his rugby has a similarly dark force about it. What is more, a quick look into his family background reveals the kind of detail that persuades sensible men to head for the hills. One uncle, Cliffie, was considered more than a little handy on the “enforcement” front when he played for Western Province during the wild days of the 1970s: not so very long ago, he won an international wrestling title at 62. Another, known as Skattie, was killed while working as a debt collector in the early 1990s.

Yet Gold, who knows a thing or two about this hard old game, sees something more in Etzebeth than a strong-armed chip off the old block. “There’s a perception out there that Eben is about brawn and nothing else,” he says. “Even if that were true, which it isn’t, there aren’t many coaches in the international game who wouldn’t find a place for a bruiser like him.

“But there’s so much more to his rugby: he has deft touches, picks beautiful lines, gets around the park like a back-rower forward. Like Pieter-Steph, he could play on the flank quite comfortably.”

Does that make him a 21st-century Frik du Preez, a Springbok of the 1960s described by the writer John Reason as “an astonishing player; possibly the only lock of modern times who had every one of the skills necessary to the completely equipped forward”? Gold’s response is startling. “Maybe a cross between Frik and John Eales,” he said, referring to the most extravagantly gifted tight forward of the professional era. Crikey.

Unlike Etzebeth and Du Toit, the 22-year-old De Jager is from the Highveld rather than the coast, hailing from the industrial town of Alberton in the East Rand. As recently as 2012 he was playing age-grade university stuff in Potchefstroom, but once the Bloemfontein-based Free State Cheetahs threw a Super Rugby contract in his direction two years ago, his heavy-duty carrying work and startling bursts of broken-field speed propelled him onwards and upwards. When he made his international debut off the bench in June of last year – against Wales, funnily enough – his potential was obvious. When he put two tries past Scotland in Port Elizabeth later that month, one of them from 40 metres, the Boks knew they had found another diamond.

“Lood is a freakish talent,” says Gold. “He looks so young – I wouldn’t think he’s in line for an advertising contract with a shaving products company any time soon – but together with Eben he can provide the full package for the team. And do you know the best thing about this group of locks? They’re pushing the boundaries.

“For as long as anyone can remember, the issue in the second row has been one of balance. Rather like the debate over whether you can play two specialist open-side flankers in the same back row, as Australia and Wales have done in this World Cup, coaches have struggled with the idea of playing two locks of similar style. If you have what I’d call a traditional No 4 – a big, heavy, physical player who might hit hard but has questionable mobility – does that mean you have to play a lighter, faster man alongside him?

“What the Springboks have with Etzebeth, De Jager and Du Toit are three No 5s who can do all the things that top-class No 4s have in their skill set. When you throw in the back-row element, you have to say that we’ve stumbled on a pretty exciting group. For years, before and after the World Cup win in 2007, we wondered where the next Bakkies Botha and Victor Matfield were to be found. We’re not wondering now.”

If, in the biggest game of their young lives, Etzebeth and De Jager spend this afternoon lording it over the most productive second-row partnership in the European game, South Africa will surely reach a fourth global semi-final in six attempts. It may not end there, either.

The Springboks are seeded to meet the All Blacks a week on Saturday and while their recent record against their greatest foe is far from encouraging – two wins in the last dozen outings – it is really not worth asking them if they think they can reverse the trend. As Etzebeth said to his interlocutor just this week, with a gamma-ray stare: “Stupid question.”