Erasmus admits Boks were ‘stupid’

● As he surveyed the wreckage of the Springboks’ second consecutive defeat in the Rugby Championship, coach Rassie Erasmus admitted they played “stupid” rugby at times against the Wallabies.

The Boks must recover from this disappointment and travel to Wellington where they must find a way past New Zealand who have lost only once at home since 2009.

The last team to beat the All Blacks at home was the Springboks to win the then Tri Nations and Erasmus admitted that this time around they are overwhelming underdogs.

“Focus now is on the All Blacks but also more on ourselves because some things we are doing better, like the mauling, and other things are getting worse,” Erasmus said after the match.

“That is the frustrating part and as the coach I take the responsibility. We have to improve week by week in all areas.

“We could have put them away if we did not play stupid rugby at some stages and I think the pressure got to a few guys but they must learn to handle that, including myself.”

As they fly out to Wellington today, Erasmus will take some comfort that their hosts are sweating on the fitness of key players Brodie Retallick and Ngani Laumape, who left the field early during their win over Argentina in Nelson on Saturday.

Focusing on some of the mistakes that let them down, Erasmus pointed out that the two tries they conceded were from lineouts and it is an area that will be ruthlessly exploited by New Zealand if it is not corrected.

“The two tries we conceded were overthrows from lineouts and just a missed tackle from someone in the midfield.”

One of the glaring lineout mistakes was made by Bongi Mbonambi, whose overthrow fell to Matt Toomua to score Australia’s second try, but he did not want to blame his hooker whom he replaced with Malcolm Marx immediately.

“Bongi has not played a lot and you can see that he was struggling. I have substituted the captain Siya Kolisi a few times in the past. It was not because of the overthrow that I replaced him because it was not his fault,” said Erasmus.

Kolisi also leapt to the defence of Mbonambi by saying that it was miscommunication and they will try to improve in Wellington.

“We will have to check it and correct it going forward but it was miscommunication,” said Kolisi.

The other worrying aspect for the Boks is that despite the two first-half tries by Mbonambi and Makazole Mapimpi, they failed to put a single point on the scoreboard after the restart, while Australia put them under pressure and scored six points.

There were a number of Boks who put in good shifts but special mention must go to Faf de Klerk and Elton Jantjies, who scored eight points and missed one conversion, after he was given the opportunity ahead of Handré Pollard.