Rassie Erasmus borrows from schoolboys as Springboks blank Italy with 14 men

IS THERE no limit to Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus’s innovation? 

After the impressive win over the Italians in Gqeberha on Saturday, the SA national team coach admitted to having “borrowed” a move from a high school side. The Boks twice used a novel tactic to form a maul in open play by lifting a player lineout-style – a move Erasmus cheerfully admitted he had “borrowed” from a Paul Roos ‘B’ team.

In fact, the match featured several innovative plays from the Boks, including a kickoff that was deliberately kicked short to lead to a scrum. 

The bigwigs and rugby brains at World Rugby headquarters must be squirming, after the SA coach declared himself only “fairly happy” with a 45-0 drubbing of the Italians in the Castle Lager Incoming Series. That “fairly happy” means, reading between the lines, that Erasmus is looking to kick on from this and refine his plans even more for the coming season.

“We tried a few things and sometimes those things work and sometimes they don’t, and you have to take it on the chin if they don’t work,” said Erasmus. “We won’t be able to do them again for a few games as people have seen them now.”

In the end, by the time the final whistle blew, the Springboks had scored seven tries to nil in keeping a major nation scoreless for the first time since a 28-0 victory over Scotland in Edinburgh 12 years ago (2013).

Red card reshuffle

The victory was achieved despite playing with 14 men for 58 minutes following the sending off of No.8 Jasper Wiese for a headbutt and for 10 minutes with 13 men after prop Wilco Louw was sin-binned for a dangerous tackle in the second half.

Erasmus said Wiese would be offered every support in any disciplinary process that followed his sending off.

“I’m not able to say it was right or wrong or how bad it was,” he said. “Jasper must now handle that with our support. He is just so committed and passionate about the team, and it would have been wonderful for him to play in this game with his brother (Cobus), which didn’t now happen.

“It’s sad, he’s not a guy that goes out there to do those kinds of things, but I don’t want to say anything here that can make it better or worse because I’m not 100 percent sure what is the best way to take it forward.”

Erasmus explained that the sending off of Wiese triggered the early replacement of Thomas du Toit at loosehead with Ox Nche.

“We had seven men against eight men in the scrum from there on and we felt that we needed a specialist loosehead while Thomas is more of a tighthead these days, so it was a tactical change.”

Vital knowledge transfer

Erasmus said the improvement was assisted by a knowledge transfer after the previous week’s less convincing 42-24 win at Loftus Versfeld.

“Last week we didn’t know a lot of the Italian players because we hadn’t played against a lot of them, so they were tough to analyse,” he said.

“After one game the older guys could transfer a lot of knowledge to the younger guys who played this week, and they could also point out where we thought their weaknesses were.

“But to keep them to nil with 13 players on the field was pretty cool. In two games it’s 87-24 for us in this series and 13 tries to three and they were a team that pushed Ireland very close. So, we’re very happy.”

Erasmus ‘fairly happy’

Overall, however, Erasmus was satisfied with the response to last week’s comprehensive but not entirely emphatic victory.

“We are fairly happy,” he said. “The Barbarian game we didn’t concede a lot of points in a tough rainy game there – we got a 50 there, we got 42 last week and 45 here and only conceded 24 points against Italy and, overall, a lot of the guys got caps.

“So, hopefully after the Georgia game a lot of the guys will have had two caps, and we will have won all four matches, and we can pick a nice settled, balanced team for the Castle Lager Rugby Championship.”

The Springboks will complete their Castle Lager Incoming Series campaign against Georgia at Mbombela on Saturday (kick off 5.10pm).