Rassie Erasmus pays tribute to under-fire Wales coach Warren Gatland

Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus says his under-fire Wales counterpart Warren Gatland hasn’t suddenly become “a bad coach” despite Red Dragons’ historic downward spiral.

Wales have lost 11 successive Test matches for the first time in their history, while Gatland has only won six out of 23 Tests in his second spell in charge of the team.

Now Gatland’s side face Erasmus’ world champions and the No.1 team in the world at the Principality Stadium on Saturday night (7.40pm SA time). It’s very likely that the home team will suffer their third-straight defeat of the Autumn series after they already went down to Fiji and Australia.

However, Erasmus says Gatland can turn things around, much like the Boks reversed their fortunes after a dark period, which saw them lose 57-0 to the All Blacks in 2017.

It’s why Erasmus resisted the urge to make wholesale changes for the match following their victory over England last weekend.

"Warren can't all of a sudden become a bad coach with his track record," Erasmus said. "The players that they have, if you look at them individually, there are some world-class players in there.

"I know the record of losing 11 on the trot is obviously not great, (but) whenever we play a team that's backs against the wall ... we take ourselves back, just before I took over in 2017, I think we lost 57-0 in New Zealand.

"The next weekend we lost to the same team at Newlands by two points. That was a weekend apart."

“I just know Warren is a great coach and I know they've got great players. It's not clicking quite there. He is a guy who has fixed things before."

Erasmus and Gatland had a ding-dong battle when the latter coached the British and Irish Lions against the Springboks in 2021.

The Springboks ended up winning a tight series 2-1 after the Lions had won the first Test. Before that, the Springboks also narrowly beat Gatland’s Wales in a brutal semi-final at the 2019 World Cup in Japan.

“Coaching can become lonely. It's cut-throat,” Erasmus said. "Whenever someone is under the pump, you don't wish anything bad on that person. I wouldn't say I'd love him to beat us, but I'd love him to be successful.

"Although we've bumped heads in the past, he's a rugby man through and through. We've had good discussions.

"I've got a lot of respect for him and I hope he gets the rest from everyone he deserves. There won't be a lack of respect from us to the Welsh team. We are preparing for the Wales we know."

@JohnGoliath82