{"id":1188018,"date":"2026-09-05T14:29:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T14:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1188018\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T14:29:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T14:29:15","slug":"victor-matfields-5-toughest-opponents-the-all-black-who-was-a-pain-the-irishman-in-his-head-and-the-horrible-englishman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1188018\/","title":{"rendered":"Victor Matfield’s 5 toughest opponents: The All Black who was a ‘pain’, the Irishman ‘in his head’ and the ‘horrible’ Englishman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legendary Springboks<\/a> lock Victor Matfield picks the opponents who made him work, and saves the highest praise for England\u2019s Simon Shaw.<\/b><\/p>\n

The finest lineout technician of the professional era has gone back through the men who changed the feel of his week, from Jerry Collins to Richie McCaw but the one he keeps circling back to is the England lock who had to wait until he was 35 for a Lions Test.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were players I respected enormously,\u201d the former Springboks<\/a> captain told The Rings History Pod.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome because they could hurt you, some because they could outthink you, and a few because they could do both. Those were the difficult ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matfield<\/a> won 127 caps for South Africa across 14 years, a World Cup in 2007 and three Super Rugby titles with the Bulls, and spent most of that time as the best read of an opposition lineout in the game. He watched players get bigger and quicker and teams get smarter, and by the end, he says, everybody knew everybody else\u2019s tricks.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there were always certain men who made the week feel a little different,\u201d he says. \u201cYou\u2019d see their name on the team sheet and immediately know Saturday wasn\u2019t going to be comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the part he wants understood first. \u201cI remember sitting in changing rooms before some enormous matches, pulling the tape around my wrists, checking my boots, listening to the noise outside. You\u2019d look around and nobody needed to say much, we knew exactly what was waiting for us. The hard part wasn\u2019t the lineout; it was knowing what was coming and still having to deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The one you felt coming<\/p>\n

Jerry Collins won 48 caps for New Zealand<\/a> and died in a car crash in France in 2015, at 34. Matfield doesn\u2019t reach for anything complicated to describe him, and thinks that\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou didn\u2019t need someone to point him out, you knew where he was,\u201d he says. \u201cHe had that presence about him, big shoulders, shaved head, and this look that made you think he wasn\u2019t particularly interested in having a friendly afternoon. Jerry wasn\u2019t complicated. If you had the ball he wanted to eat you, and if there was a loose ball with two or three bodies around it, he wasn\u2019t going to stand back and watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are tackles where you get back to your feet and quietly check that everything is still where it should be, and Jerry could give you those. But he wasn\u2019t some madman running around trying to hurt people, he understood the game, and that gets forgotten. There was an honesty to the way he played, no hiding, no shortcuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ali Williams was always thinking<\/p>\n

Ali Williams, 77 caps and a lock of the same generation, offered a different problem, and one Matfield openly enjoyed.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople sometimes imagine lineouts as two tall blokes jumping in the air and trying to catch a ball, and I wish it had been that simple,\u201d he says.<\/a> \u201cAt that level, especially against New Zealand, it became a little game of chase. You changed the call because you thought they\u2019d worked it out, then you wondered whether they knew you\u2019d changed it. Ali loved that stuff. He\u2019d be looking across, watching where I was standing, watching our lifters, and I was doing exactly the same to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was also more athletic than people remember, so if your timing was slightly wrong, he could get into the air quickly, and suddenly the ball you thought was yours wasn\u2019t yours anymore. That annoyed me. I can laugh about it now; I probably didn\u2019t laugh much then.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The way we play is built for any weather\u2019 \u2013 Siya Kolisi\u2019s warning to the All Blacks ahead of crucial third Test<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Simon Shaw was a horrible man to see<\/p>\n

Matfield reserves his greatest praise for a lock who won 71 England<\/a> caps between 1996 and 2011 without ever quite becoming the first name on anybody\u2019s list.<\/p>\n

Simon Shaw toured with the Lions in 1997, was called up in New Zealand in 2005, and played the full 80 in the 2007 World Cup final that Matfield\u2019s Springboks won 15-6. He wasn\u2019t in the matchday squad for the first Test in Durban in 2009. He came into the side for the second at Loftus Versfeld at 35, the oldest Test debutant in Lions history, and was named man of the match in a 28-25 defeat settled by Morn\u00e9 Steyn\u2019s penalty two minutes into injury time.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimon Shaw was a horrible man to see standing on the other side of a lineout, and I mean that in the nicest possible way,\u201d Matfield says. \u201cHe was enormous. I\u2019d played against plenty of big locks, obviously; you don\u2019t spend your career in the second row without getting used to looking at very large human beings, but Shaw had this combination of size and experience that made him awkward. He\u2019d been around forever, at least it felt that way, and by the time the Lions came to South Africa in 2009 he knew every little trick a lock could know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur difficulty was around the contact area. He wasn\u2019t the sort of player who moved easily, so if he got himself into a good position, you had a problem. And in the lineout you had to respect him. Maybe he didn\u2019t always receive the attention some other locks did, but we knew. Players always know. You know who makes your job difficult, you know who forces you to spend another half hour looking at footage, you know who makes you change something you normally wouldn\u2019t change. Simon was one of those men.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat impressed me most was that he never seemed interested in making things look pretty; he just did his job, and there\u2019s something very difficult about playing against a man like that. He wasn\u2019t trying to entertain anybody. He was trying to make your afternoon miserable, and he was very good at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That second Test in Pretoria sent five Lions to hospital, Adam Jones with a dislocated shoulder and Gethin Jenkins with a fractured cheekbone among them, and it has become the reference point for the series. Matfield says he can still feel it when he thinks about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything hurt, bodies everywhere, people getting patched up, nobody wanting to give an inch, and Simon belonged in a game like that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had that old-fashioned hardness. You\u2019d hit him and he wouldn\u2019t make much fuss, you\u2019d compete with him at the next lineout and there he was again. No drama, just work. I always respected players like that, because South African rugby understands that mentality very well. We like people who keep coming, and Simon kept coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe might not be the first name everybody mentions when they remember the great players of that Lions tour, but as the men who actually had to play against him, we remember. I certainly do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Paul O\u2019Connell had done the homework<\/p>\n

Paul O\u2019Connell captained that 2009 tour and finished with 108 Ireland caps, and is the opponent Matfield says occupied him longest before kick-off.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wasn\u2019t going to run over me, he wasn\u2019t going to do something spectacular, he did his homework, and that worried me more,\u201d Matfield says. \u201cI spent hours looking at opposition throws, movements, little habits. Then you played Ireland, and Paul had been doing exactly the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember standing opposite him wondering how much he already knew. Has he seen that movement? Does he know where we\u2019re going? Did we show him something earlier without realising it? That\u2019s what a good lineout caller does to you, he gets inside your head a little bit, and Paul certainly got inside mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are opponents you remember because of one big moment, and with Paul I don\u2019t remember it that way. I remember the pressure, constant pressure. When you finish playing you don\u2019t miss every opponent, let\u2019s be honest about that, but I missed those battles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rassie Erasmus won\u2019t throw old Springboks \u2018away\u2019 with Siya Kolisi\u2019s successor primed for hybrid role<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Richie McCaw understood the afternoon<\/p>\n

Richie McCaw played 148 Tests and captained New Zealand against Matfield\u2019s South Africa often enough for the pair to become a fixture of the fixture. The thing Matfield keeps returning to isn\u2019t the breakdown work, it\u2019s what McCaw did with whichever referee was in front of him, which changed from one week to the next.<\/p>\n

\u201cRichie was a pain, and I mean that with enormous respect,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d prepare all week for New Zealand, you\u2019d talk about their backs, their kicking game, their lineout, then the match started and somehow Richie was everywhere. You\u2019d think you had quick ball and suddenly everything slowed down. I used to wonder whether there were two of him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want more from Planet Rugby? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for world-class coverage you can trust.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople talked a lot about Richie and referees, and we talked about it too, of course, every team did. You\u2019d be standing there thinking, surely he can\u2019t get away with that again, then you\u2019d watch the referee wave play on. It drove you mad, but when I got older I appreciated it differently. He knew when to put his hands in, he knew when to get out, and most importantly he understood what the referee was allowing that particular afternoon. That\u2019s intelligence. You can dislike it when you\u2019re playing against it, but you have to respect it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSouth Africa never tried to make life comfortable for him, because teams knew how important he was, so you wanted bodies on him and you wanted him getting up slowly. The problem was, he kept getting up. If you\u2019re asking me about the opponent who made you work for absolutely everything, Richie belongs right at the top.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matfield retired after the 2015 World Cup with 127 caps, a South African record at the time, and says the scorelines have gone soft in the memory whilst the men haven\u2019t. \u201cThe results start to fade a little, not the big ones, of course,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played with some frightening rugby players myself, so I knew what toughness looked like, but there were a handful on the other side who made me think, bloody hell, we have to earn this one today. Even now, years later, I can still picture them.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0<\/b>Sir Steve Hansen calls on All Blacks to \u2018belt the sh-t out of\u2019 the Springboks after \u2018poor decision\u2019 in Test two<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Legendary Springboks lock Victor Matfield picks the opponents who made him work, and saves the highest praise for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1188019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4102],"tags":[393,225,90462,678,704,12,4151,2196,79,16,15,130648],"class_list":["post-1188018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-england","tag-home-page","tag-internationals","tag-ireland","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-rugby","tag-south-africa","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-victor-matfield"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117218914412237535","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1188018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1188019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1188018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1188018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1188018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}