With the clock in the red at the end of the first half at Aviva Stadium on Saturday night, 13-man Ireland were 10 metres from their own try-line and swimming against the South African tide.
Having shown incredible resilience to get back into the game a few minutes earlier through Dan Sheehan's try, which cut the gap to 12-7, they had failed to see out the closing stages of the half, while Jack Crowley’s sin-bin and another maul penalty had the South Africans back within sniffing distance of the line.
There was no doubt what the call would be. By this stage of the game, the Springboks had spent the first half feasting on the Irish scrum.
Four of their five put-ins up to then had resulted in either a penalty or penalty advantage.
The other was a reset, from which they won a penalty advantage, and Cobus Reinach’s try meant they never had to cash it in.
And then Rassie Erasmus pulled off the ultimate flex, hauling his two dominant props – Thomas du Toit and Boan Venter – from the game and sending on the fresher legs of Gerhard Steenekamp and Wilco Louw.
It was pure theatre, as the Bulls duo ran on together like a WWE tag-team act.
Move over 'Legion of Doom’, this was time for the ‘Pretoria Pair’.
Andrew Porter was already on borrowed time with referee Matt Carley, and Louw and Steenekamp made sure to hammer the point home.
From that scrum, Porter joined Sam Prendergast and Crowley in the sin-bin, while Paddy McCarthy was next to crumble under the considerable weight of Louw, and the inevitable penalty try was awarded as the world champions flexed their way to a 19-7 lead, which they turned into a 24-13 win.
Even the stats log struggled to paint the full picture of South Africa’s scrum dominance.
The numbers would suggest that Ireland gave up six penalties from South Africa’s 16 scrums, but the reality is considerably worse.
Of the 16 scrums South Africa had the feed for on Saturday, four of those were reset after collapses, bringing the more appropriate number to 12.
Breaking that number down further, it gets worse.
Crediting South Africa with six penalties (five penalties and a penalty try) from the setpiece only tells half of the story, with four other instances when they earned a penalty advantage that wasn’t ultimately used.
Two of those advantages resulted in tries, for Reinach and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, while one other advantage wasn’t counted on the stats after Tommy O’Brien’s high tackle on Canan Moodie gave the Springboks a separate penalty closer to the posts.
The opening scrum of the game was also a penalty advantage for the visitors and set the tone for the night, but that advantage expired after they made significant ground down the left touchline.
While the stats say there were six penalties from 16 scrums, the reality is that there were 10 infringements from the 12 Springbok scrums that were played out, and those infringements directly contributed to 19 of South Africa’s 24 points.
Andy Farrell has spoken of the pride in defeat after Ireland's loss to South Africa. pic.twitter.com/Dt5Qj33lmW
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) November 22, 2025
Andy Farrell strongly defended his side after Saturday’s game.
While he acknowledged "stupid errors" had cost his side, he spoke of his pride in how they stayed in the fight and somehow went into the final 10 minutes of the game with a puncher’s chance.
While that feeling is understandable, it is only so to an extent.
South Africa were enjoying such dominance at the scrum that for a while in the second half they actually took their eye off the job at hand.
The visitors became so consumed with surgically taking Ireland’s scrum apart, they became victims of their ego, and had Ireland finished that try-scoring opportunity with a few minutes to go, it could well have come back to bite them on the behind.
The Six Nations begins away to France in just over 10 weeks, but despite such a chastening at the weekend, Farrell insists his scrum remains "world-class".
"If you look at our scrum... over the last five or six years, it's been world-class at times," he said.
"There's a Lions front row in there. So, that's not been an issue for us at all.
"It's been a strength for us and we pride ourselves on that. Sometimes they catch you.
"They've caught plenty other teams and the momentum, they kept on going for the blood, didn't they?"
While there have been many days where the Irish scrum has been world-class, the days where it has gone badly, it has been penalised off the park, such as 2022 against England, the World Cup quarter-final against New Zealand, multiple occasions against France, and even in this year’s Six Nations against Wales.
When it comes to the scrum, perception is reality.
In previous games where Ireland have been heavily penalised, they have often defended their approach by referencing the feedback they have been given after the event.
They may feel aggrieved by some of the decisions that went against them at the weekend, but adapting in the moment needs to be the priority.
It was notable that South Africa replaced both of their props inside the opening 25 minutes last week when they had been struggling against Italy, but while that looked like an act of desperation at the time, new faces changed the picture for the match officials.
The mayhem of the cards were an added curveball for Farrell to deal with on Saturday, but the Ireland coach was asked afterwards whether he had considered making early changes to try stem the flow of penalties.
"Well, obviously you get advice from what John [Fogarty] is saying and seeing in real time on the floor.
"You get advice from what's going on there but it isn't just one side. A scrummage is always about the pack of eight.
"The pressure also comes on one aspect because we're under pressure in other areas as well. So, it's not just on one area."
Farrell is correct in saying the penalty pressure wasn’t coming from just one area.
The six official penalties at the scrum were among a total of 18 conceded across the course of the match, a mix of technical offences at the breakdown, maul, offsides, and foul play, one of which resulted in James Ryan’s 20-minute red card.
The Ireland coach had spoken earlier in the week about his frustrations around discipline.
While the penalty count in the earlier rounds of this November block had all been reasonable, the flurry of penalties Ireland had conceded in their own 22 against Australia rankled with Farrell.
Composure under pressure appears to be an issue, with Ireland’s discipline problems arriving in clusters, and that is leading to cards.
We have written this statistic multiple times in the last few years, but it needs repeating; in the two years leading up to and including to the 2023 World Cup Ireland gave away a total of three yellow cards in 29 games, which was by a clear distance the cleanest record across Six Nations and Rugby Championship teams.
Since then, Ireland have picked up 19 yellow cards and three reds in the space of 22 games – an average of a card every game.
Only South Africa have (20 yellows and four reds) have collected more cards in that time, although the world champions have played five extra games.
"Amongst all that, how do you judge a 15-man game when you're nowhere near it?" Farrell concluded, as he was asked to reflect on this campaign.
"So again, we need to look at ourselves and why that happened, but at the same time, judge it for what it is.
"But nine weeks [until the next camp] to see how we need to come back into camp is plainly obvious after playing a game like that."
