LONDON (AP) — South Africa will be 9,000 kilometers (5,600 miles) from home at Twickenham on Saturday and probably won't feel much of a difference.
The Springboks were drawn to London by Argentina, which sacrificed staging the match at home for much bigger ticket revenue.
The downside for the Pumas in not playing at 57,000-seat Estadio Mario Alberto Kempes or 49,500-seat José Amalfitani Stadium is going into the heart of the largest concentration of South African expatriates.
The chance for supporters to witness the Springboks make history and win their first back-to-back Rugby Championship trophies has bumped ticket sales north of 70,000. The Pumas are going to make a pile of money and the Springboks are going to feel right at home.
This is the third time in two years the Springboks are at Twickenham and not facing England; 80,827 watched them beat New Zealand 35-7 in a 2023 World Cup warmup, and 60,000 saw them beat Wales 41-13 in mid-2024. Both games sounded more like Johannesburg than Auckland or Cardiff.
“We thoroughly enjoyed the experience,” Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus said.
The Pumas also chose Twickenham for the only other Rugby Championship match played outside of the four SANZAAR countries and it didn't go well; 48,515 watched Australia beat them 33-21 in 2016.
South Africa arrives at the final round leading the standings for the first time and owning its fate following big wins over New Zealand ( 43-10 ) and Argentina ( 67-30 ). The All Blacks are a point behind, the Wallabies four behind, and the Pumas out of contention and set to take the wooden spoon for the first time since 2022.
Last weekend in Durban, the Springboks had their noses in front of the Pumas at halftime then blew away the visitors with nine tries, two of them while a man short.
The only change to the starting XV is the return from injury of loosehead prop Ox Nche.
“The focus for us is on what we have to do to try to win the competition twice in a row for the first time, so the stakes are high for us,” Erasmus said. “We know what we are capable of if we remain within our structures and play for the full 80 minutes.”
Pumas coach Felipe Contepomi blew up his embarrassed side, making seven changes and two positional moves.
The main talking points were switching Santiago Carreras from flyhalf to his more natural fullback position, and, because of injuries, choosing rookie halves Simón Benítez Cruz and Gerónimo Prisciantelli, who has seven minutes of test experience. Together, they have less than four hours.
“He (Prisciantelli) is playing against the best team in the world and a top 10 (Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu), so it's not easy,” Contepomi said. “We have complete confidence in him. It's his preparation and understanding of what the team wants to do.”
AP rugby: https://apnews.com/hub/rugby
South Africa's Siya Kolisi runs into the field ahead of a rugby championship test match between South Africa and Argentina in Durban, South Africa, Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia General Assembly ended its annual session early Friday without a plan for new equipment to overhaul the state's voting system by a July deadline, plunging into doubt the future of elections in the political battleground.
The lawmakers' failure to offer a solution after months of debate raises uncertainty about how Georgians will vote in November and leaves confusion that could end in the courts or a special legislative session.
“They’ve abdicated their responsibility,” Democratic state Rep. Saira Draper said of inaction by Republicans who control the legislature.
Currently, voters make their choices on Dominion Voting machines, which then print ballots with a QR code that scanners read to tally votes. Those machines have been repeatedly targeted by President Donald Trump following his 2020 election loss, and Trump’s Georgia supporters responded by enacting a law in 2024 that bans using barcodes to count votes.
But state law still requires counties to use the machines. No money has been allocated to reprogram them, and lawmakers failed to agree on a replacement.
“We’ll have an unresolvable statutory conflict come July 1,” said House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Victor Anderson, a Cornelia Republican who backed a proposal to keep using the machines in 2026 that Senate Republicans declined to consider.
House Republicans and Democrats backed Anderson's plan, which would have required that Georgia choose a voting process that didn't use QR codes by 2028. Election officials preferred that solution.
“The Senate has shown that they’re not responsible actors,” Draper said. She added that Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Trump-endorsed Republican running for governor, seemed more interested in keeping Trump's backing than “doing right by Georgia voters.”
A spokesperson for Jones didn't immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.
Joseph Kirk, Bartow County election supervisor and president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, said he’ll look to the secretary of state for guidance and assumes a judge will rule to instruct election officials how to proceed.
“This is uncharted territory,” he said.
Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is also running for governor, said officials are “ready to follow the law and follow the Constitution.”
Republican House Speaker Jon Burns told reporters that his chamber was seeking to minimize changes this year.
“You can’t change horses in the middle of the stream,” Burns said.
Burns said he would meet with Gov. Brian Kemp and “take his temperature" on the possibility of a special session. A spokesperson for Kemp didn't answer questions about what the outgoing Republican governor would do.
Anderson said without action, the state could be required to use hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots in November.
Election officials say switching to a new system within just a few months, as advocated by some Republicans, would be nearly impossible.
“They made no way for this to happen except putting a deadline on it," Cherokee County elections director Anne Dover said of the switch away from barcodes. Dover said one problem under some plans is that a very large number of ballots would have to be printed.
Lawmakers seemed more concerned about scoring political points than making practical plans, Paulding County Election Supervisor Deidre Holden said.
“If anyone is resilient and can get the job done, it’s all of us election officials, but the legislators need to work with us, and they need to understand what we do before they go making laws that are basically unachievable for us,” Holden said.
Supporters of hand-marked paper ballots say voters are more likely to trust in an accurate count if they can see what gets read by the scanner.
Right-wing election activists lobbied lawmakers for an immediate switch to hand-marked paper ballots, but the House turned away from a Senate proposal to do so.
Anderson said he wasn’t sure if a special session could escape those political crosswinds, but said Georgia lawmakers must fix the problem.
“This is a legislative problem,” Anderson said. “It’s a legislative solution that has to happen.”
FILE - Voting machines are seen at the Bartow County Election office, Jan. 25, 2024, in Cartersville, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)
