Maverick Erasmus glad to see Cips spice up the game
RASSIE Erasmus and Eddie Jones have been coaches at opposite ends of the spectrum over the last few weeks. Where the England coach had a spat with Bath’s owner, Bruce Craig, over training injuries, Erasmus has been on a charm offensive.
The new Springbok coach, below, has not just succeeded in getting most South Africans behind his team, but also home franchise coaches – while also establishing cordial relations with Premiership rugby directors who have Bok players on their rosters.
The other difference is that Erasmus had the series won by the final whistle in the second Test in Bloemfontein, whereas Jones was facing the whitewash he predicted before the tour that he would dish out to the Boks.
What comes across when you talk to Erasmus, as I did in Cape Town this week, is not only that charm but a clever coach who has an openness, honesty and sense of mission which bodes well for South African rugby.
Erasmus also has the reputation for being a maverick, and his love of the unorthodox prompted this response to a question about Danny Cipriani’s inclusion as England fly-half in the final Test.
“I like characters in the game. If they’re aren’t characters like Danny then all the kids are robots...I like Chris Ashton, I like it when people bring something to the party and it spices the game up. People enjoy that.”
Erasmus says he also had no reservations about spicing the Springbok team up to make it more representative of South African society by making almost half of his starting 23 nonwhite, with captain Siya Kolisi, centurion prop Tendai ‘Beast’ Mtawarira, and quicksilver wing S’Busiso Nkosi claiming the headlines.
“It’s just a dull mind shift we needed to make in South Africa. I don’t just mean me, but the whole country – in terms of just doing it, and backing the boys, and coaching them better, and helping them. If they struggle, give them another chance, and help them with their weaknesses.
“It’s just something we had to do, and luckily now we have this bunch of players who are really talented and very professional, and are really high performance athletes. In the past I think we struggled a bit with players who were really talented but never came through a high performance background. So, when you threw them in at the deep end most of them sunk because there was too much information and tenseness.
“These boys have great talent, and there are others outside this group as well. There are some great players among the guys who played at the Junior World Cup and in the Sevens, so I’m very comfortable that we’re sitting pretty on the transformation side.”
Ask Erasmus how he managed to pull a Springbok side together so quickly from combinations who have never played together before and he says that it was crucial not to panic. “Look, the first few minutes (at Ellis Park) it was disastrous on defence, some of the combinations. They were nervous, inexperienced, overawed by the day, the situation, the enormity of the game – and second they haven’t seen this picture before. “So, we just had to understand that might happen. I never expected that it would be 24 points, or 12 points in the second Test, but we expected something like this might happen, and that’s why we put Willie Le Roux in there at the beginning to help us out. “They are hard workers, man, and they’re desperate to get it right, and that helps a lot. They adjusted quickly and the one thing I’ll say about these guys is that they’re not afraid to make decisions. If you’ve got players who do that then you’ve got something to coach – if it’s the wrong decision you can put it right, and if it’s the right decision (you’re fine), but if you get players who stop making decisions that’s a tough one to coach.” With overseas based full-back Le Roux, No.8 Duane Vermeulen, and scrum-half Faf de Klerk so important to Erasmus’ winning start as South Africa coach he also explains how he intends to handle the issue. “We’ve got 450 players overseas, so what I’m trying to do, with my coaching team, is select a World Cup squad weekly. So, if we have to play tomorrow in a World Cup final we know what our 23 is. There are a lot of players overseas that are great, awesome, in their prime, some 22, some 34. But the more access you have to a player the more he’s aligned to what you’re trying to do, so that’s first prize and that’s what you get with local guys. Then you have to start weighing up who’s our number one, two and three. “Your number three might have one Test cap, and we’ve got another guy with 36 Test caps playing for a club in France where they’re not too fit. So, how are we going to get him fit? You take it case by case. That’s what I was trying to find out when I went over there three or four times earlier in the year: How desperate are the players still? Do they really want to play? If they do want to play will they conform with our conditioning regime?” As for access Erasmus says: “If you look at Regulation 9 you have them – the only one we didn’t have them for was the Wales game (in America) outside the window, and in November there’s another Wales game outside the window. “But I tend to go the route where I want Dai Young (at Wasps) to be happy with Willie, I don’t want him to be upset with me. So it will be a phone call to Dai saying can we have him for this game and that game. Prior to the World Cup we have them together for eight weeks, but I said to Dai that I wanted to check Willie, see how keen and professional he is, and we saw (against England) that he’s keen to be here.” He adds: “It will be case by case, but where clubs tell us they don’t want to give up the players we’ll just leave it. If you get a player who’s owner is upset up with him, and he doesn’t get his money, he’s nervous, and his family’s unhappy it’s just not worth the trouble.”