European Boks have inside gen on the Lions | Chris Hewett

Modern Springbok coaches fall into two camps: far-sighted progressives like Kitch Christie, Jake White and Rassie Erasmus – people who tend to deliver world titles, in other words – and backward-looking medievalists such as John Williams and Rudolf Straeuli, neither of whom won anything worth winning.

If some of the rugby played by the South Africans under Williams, in the early 1990s, and Straeuli, a decade later, bore hints of a great mind at work, it was a great mind of the 13th century.

But there is still a place in the game for ancient thought, and thinkers do not come much older than Sun Tzu, who wrote The Art of War some 2,500 years ago, when Jimmy Gopperth was still at home in New Zealand.

Perhaps the most celebrated line from the Chinese military strategist’s treatise is also among the shortest.

“Know your enemy,” he writes – an instruction so fundamental, it is hard to believe anyone could fail to understand its importance.

Yet at the last World Cup, the All Blacks – the smartest team around, far more often than not – played directly to England‘s strengths on semi-final day, both selectorially and tactically. Did the New Zealanders suffer a brain fade, or did they fall short on the due diligence front? Only they can say, but one of those two explanations must be right.

Which brings us to the current Springboks, who did so much homework on England before the 2019 final, they ended up doing a comprehensive job on them during it. Might they inflict similar punishment on the British and Irish Lions in the coming weeks? Let’s put it this way: they won’t fail for the want of knowledge.

South Africans have spread themselves so thickly across the professional leagues of the northern hemisphere, there is barely a ball kicked without one of them being in a position to catch it. Indeed, no single nation has ever embedded so many players so deeply in so many corners of any sporting landscape and absorbed so much valuable first-hand detail of local custom and practice.

It is falling-off-a-log simple to draw a complete team of South African imports from the current Premiership, all in their right positions and with plenty of options on the bench. Across the water in France, you can pick a run-on combination with your eyes shut –a side featuring Cheslin Kolbe, Handre Pollard and Eben Etzebeth, no less.

There is less of a presence in the PRO14, but if we include the Munster flanker Chris Cloete, the Edinburgh wing Duhan van der Merwe and his clubmate Jaco van der Walt, all of whom have now switched national allegiance, it is possible to field a full side.

And if we broaden things out still further, it is the same story in the Top League in Japan and Major League Rugby in the United States. How long before we see a new breed of have-boots-will-travel South Africans playing the time zones and sacrificing their international prospects on the altar of multiple cross-border contracts, much as white-ball specialists do in cricket?

The most celebrated line from Sun Tzu’s Art of War is also among the shortest. “Know your enemy.”

Speaking of which, the great summer game carries with it a cautionary tale for those who throw open their doors with such enthusiasm. Think back to 1976, when the West Indies began their long domination of world cricket by smithereening England all over Old Trafford and The Oval, having come armed with several trump cards.

The first was a rich mix of hardened Test players – Clive Lloyd, Roy Fredericks, Alvin Kallicharran, Deryck Murray – and potent young talent on the brink of greatness: Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding…none of them were older than 25.

Secondly, they were bristling with righteous anger, having found themselves on the unacceptable end of some serious Australian nastiness a few months previously and then been politely informed, by the England captain Tony Grieg, that they would be made to “grovel” on their arrival here. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, they knew all there was to know about English conditions and how best to prosper in them. Half the touring party were playing county cricket at the time, while three more – Fredericks, Murray and Lawrence Rowe – had been doing so in the seasons leading into the trip. Only three of the squad, the reserve keeper Mike Findlay and the spinners Albert Padmore and Raphick Jumadeen, would retire with- out spending at least one summer earning a crust in the shires.

It stands to reason that players who go into a contest knowing the opposition inside out are in the best possible position to – well, turn them inside out. On this basis, there is more than a little significance to the fact that nine members of the Springbok squad for the Lions series are currently playing fulltime in Britain or Ireland, and that another three – the full-back Willie Roux, the scrum-half Cobus Reinach and the lock Franco Mostert – were doing so until five minutes ago.

Sun Tzu had nothing to say about gunpowder, for the very good reason that he was writing many centuries before its invention, but in a later edition of his book he would surely have offered his readers another important piece of advice. Something along the lines of “never shoot yourself in the foot”.