Springboks 45, England 21: Ellis Park Scores 17 Points Before England's Lungs Even Clear Customs

Forty-five to twenty-one. Write it on a wall. Tattoo it somewhere respectable. The Springboks opened the inaugural Nations Championship at Ellis Park by scoring 17 points in 12 minutes, which is not a fast start so much as a home invasion with a match programme. England had barely finished their anthems when the scoreboard was already speaking Afrikaans. Twelve minutes! Some of the English bench hadn't finished their altitude gels. Some hadn't finished their sentences.

Ellis Park at 17:40 on a highveld winter evening is the closest thing rugby has to a natural phenomenon — 62,000 people, air like a stingy barman's free pour, and a Springbok side that came out of the tunnel like the tunnel had insulted their mothers. The opening quarter was pure green chaos: runners from everywhere, offloads that should require a licence, and English defenders making the universal arm gestures of men asking each other whose fault the last try was. Nobody answered, because the next one was already happening.

Credit where due — and we say this through gritted, gloating teeth — England did not fold. They went to the boot, slowed the madness, kicked the corners and clawed it back to 17-14 by halftime, at which point every South African in the stadium suddenly remembered every horror movie they'd ever watched. There were fifteen genuinely nervous minutes in Johannesburg, a city that does not do nervous, where the beers stopped mid-pour and the boerewors rolls went uneaten. Uneaten! At Ellis Park! That's how serious it briefly got.

Then the second half arrived, and with it the oldest story in world rugby: the Bomb Squad got off the bench, the thin air got thinner, and England's brave first-half plan aged like milk on a bakkie dashboard. The Boks piled on 28 more points after the break while England managed 7, which is what happens when your lungs file for divorce at altitude in the third quarter. By the end the crowd was doing the wave, the stadium DJ was auditioning for a residency, and the English backline was breathing like a fax machine.

One down, two to come — Scotland pitch up on 11 July, Wales on the 18th, and both have now watched this tape. Watching the tape doesn't help. That's the beautiful part. You can study the avalanche all week; it's still an avalanche. Nations Championship, welcome to South Africa. Mind the step.