'A lot on the line' for Ireland against Springboks

Caelan Doris will earn his 56th Ireland cap in Saturday's crunch meeting with the Springboks

Ireland captain Caelan Doris admits there is "a lot on the line" for his side in Saturday's climactic autumn Test against world champions South Africa (17:40 GMT).

Having started the November campaign with a disappointing loss to New Zealand in Chicago, Ireland bounced back with comfortable wins over Japan and Australia in Dublin.

But a victory over the back-to-back World Cup winners on Saturday would give Ireland a major boost leading into the 2026 Six Nations.

"The success of this November hinges a little bit on our performance this weekend," said Doris.

"The momentum has built nicely as the weeks have gone on, but this is the real test now so there's a lot of excitement for it."

Like with the All Blacks, Ireland have enjoyed an intense rivalry with the Springboks in recent years, with Andy Farrell's side winning three of the past four meetings.

"There's definitely a rivalry there," added Doris.

"There's a strong understanding of how we both want to play the game. We've had some good results, they've beaten us over there in 2024.

"There's a lot on the line tomorrow, that's the feeling anyway, and the lads are excited for it."

Despite Ireland's strong record in this fixture, South Africa are widely viewed as favourites for Saturday's game following a thoroughly impressive run of results that included retaining the Rugby Championship title and beating France in Paris earlier this month despite playing half of the match with 14 men.

But Doris is not interested in whether or not Ireland are viewed as underdogs.

"We're not concerned with the external noise around that," said the 27-year-old, who reverts to his favoured number eight position after playing at open-side flanker against Australia last week.

"There's a good feeling in camp, there's an excitement about this game, there's an awareness that it will be a proper challenge and that we will need to be at our best, physically more than anything.

"But there's definitely belief that we can do the job if we're there."