Rassie red alert over World Cup opener against Scotland
While much fuss is being made of the Springboks’ World Cup group clash against top-ranked Ireland, it is the opening encounter against Scotland that could prove pivotal, SA’s director of Rugby Rassie Erasmus says.
In their group stage matches the Boks will face Scotland, Ireland, Tonga and Romania when they bid to navigate a path to the quarterfinals. SA kick off their World Cup title defence against fifth-ranked Scotland in Marseille on September 10.
“All of us South Africans are putting our heads too far ahead,” Erasmus said. “Common sense tells you that you must plan well and play really well in our second [against Romania] and last [against Tonga] pool games because there are players there that can play.
“But we face Scotland in the first match. If we beat Scotland, then we’ve got a little more breathing space in the rest of the pool. Everybody’s talking Ireland, Ireland, Ireland, but people are underestimating the importance of the Scotland game.
“Scotland will probably be saying ‘why are you guys not talking about us’? They have seven or eight SA-born players in their team.
“Scotland and Ireland play each other in the last round of pool matches.
“The game against Ireland is important, and yes, they are going to be big. But the Scottish Test match, in my opinion, is probably the biggest Test match for us currently.”
The Boks will hold a camp in Durban this week before they begin their preparations for the Rugby Championship at a training camp in Pretoria from June 12-30.
In the Rugby Championship, SA host Australia (Loftus Versfeld, July 8) and Argentina (Ellis Park, July 29) and face New Zealand away from home (Auckland, July 15).
After the championship, they will play a warm-up match against Argentina in Buenos Aires (August 5), before wrapping up their World Cup preparation with more friendlies against Wales in Cardiff (August 19) and New Zealand in London (August 25).
Erasmus said the Boks would not be enlisting the services of a permanent referee coach for their World Cup campaign. Earlier, he had wanted to bring Welsh refereeing expert Nigel Owens on board, but he will be training referees for World Rugby.
“Nigel was the perfect fit and, unfortunately, he’s not available,” Erasmus said. “But in our engagement with Nigel, there were a lot of discussions on what we need and how we need to change, how he can help us, and so on.
“Through that, I believe we have built a relationship with World Rugby. Felix Jones [defence coach] is on working groups and Jacques Nienaber [head coach] is on the high-performance committee.
“Yes, we haven’t played recently, but we haven’t really been bumping heads with World Rugby the last couple of months,” Erasmus said..
The Boks name their 33-man World Cup squad on August 8.*