What better time, a few days shy of the first Test against South Africa, to seek out a great thinker and turn to him for illumination? Step forward, in a manner of speaking, the late Donald Rumsfeld – the American politician who persuaded multiple Presidents that he knew a thing or two, even when he didn’t know that he knew them.
The vast majority of rugby followers would, in Rumsfeld’s oft-quoted formulation, place the Springboks in the category of “known knowns”.
They are the reigning world champions, they have a fair sprinkling of the sport’s highest-profile players, from Cheslin Kolbe...