Ken Borland

PRETORIA (July 6, 2024) – South Africa coach Rassie Erasmus said his team had to show plenty of grit in their hard-fought 27-20 win over Ireland at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday evening because they were not completely in synthesis yet.

Ireland had a second-half try by wing James Lowe disallowed by TMO Ben Whitehouse due to an earlier ruck infringement, and the 31-year-old New Zealand-raised wing was then at the centre of another tight call by Whitehouse when a 65^th-minute try by Springbok wing Cheslin Kolbe was allowed.

Lowe leapt high to try and keep a penalty kick by Handre Pollard in-field, flicking it back, but Kolbe had raced up in the chase with superb pace and anticipation, hacking the ball ahead and then diving on it to score and give South Africa a 20-8 lead after the conversion. Whitehouse ruled that Lowe had released the ball before his foot stepped in touch, otherwise the Springboks would have had to come back for a lineout.

“We all knew that it was going to be a close game and although we controlled things really well in terms of speed, it was still a real grind for us,” Erasmus said at the end of the first Test. “I’m satisfied but there’s lots of hard work to be done.

“With players in Japan, the United Rugby Championship and playing in England, sometimes it’s difficult to get them all in sync. We were definitely far from perfect tonight, we were lucky and Cheslin’s try was the one that put them away. Ireland never gave up though, it was a very stop-start game for both teams.

“But against a team of that quality, I hope people can see we are trying to develop our attacking game, there will be mistakes and a lack of cohesion, but it will come,” Erasmus said.

Ireland coach Andy Farrell hailed his team for coming so close to victory after a first half in which they were dominated and trailed 8-13 on the scoreboard. But in the second half they were constantly nipping at the Springboks’ heels and giving them a hard time, scoring twice.

“South Africa deserved to win, so congratulations to them. In the first half we were just off, we gave away access for them to play their game, we were a bit passive in defence,” Farrell said.

“But there were strong words at halftime and this team showed just how courageous they are, we got ourselves back in the game because we just would not go away. Plenty of teams who were under the pump like we were in the first half, the game would have got away from them in the second half. But we stayed in the fight.

“It’s not for me to say if the TMO was right or wrong, but I did have dubious thoughts about it. But that’s life, it’s all to debate but it is what it is. It’s a difficult game to referee and sometimes it goes for you and sometimes it doesn’t. But we showed a huge amount of character,” Farrell said.

The second and final Test will be played in Durban next Saturday.

Jacques Nienaber and Rassie Erasmus, the duo who became heroes by turning a Springbok side at its lowest ebb into world champions, are now trending towards zero in some critics’ eyes, with fellow World Cup winning coach Jake White the latest to take a potshot.

White, now spearheading the Bulls’ renaissance as director of rugby at Loftus Versfeld, took a thinly veiled swipe at Nienaber’s lack of coaching experience in a column he wrote for the Rugby Pass website on Thursday.

Criticising the decision to make 14 changes to the Springbok starting XV and suffering an historic first defeat to Wales on home turf last weekend in Bloemfontein, White said Nienaber should have learnt not to experiment at Test level in that fashion at junior or club level.

“Making 14 changes obviously didn’t work for the Springboks and personally, I think Jacques Nienaber missed a trick,” White wrote. “There’s an expectation that you win every time you play in South African colours and the margins in Test rugby are incredibly small.

“I’m told his rationale for picking that second Test team was because he … didn’t want them to just be playing a dead rubber in the third Test. I’d say I don’t think there should ever be a dead rubber Test when you’re playing at home.

“The job of a national coach is to win Test matches. National coaches shouldn’t use Tests to see if players are good enough, thats what A sides or training is for.

“You’re not a national coach to learn lessons. You learn that at age-grade or club level – I mean that sincerely – there’s a reason people go through a system to become national coach,” White said.

The often-outspoken coach added that Wales will love the prospect of a winner-takes-all contest in Cape Town and the situation the Springboks have put themselves in.

“What I’m expecting on Saturday is massive amounts of pressure that he [Nienaber] didn’t need. Nienaber could have won the Series and now he’s created a real cauldron in Cape Town.

“It’s at sea level, and the Welsh will be boosted by the fact they’ve contested Tests on the highveld. Wales will come brimming with confidence. I’ve coached against them, and the one thing they don’t do is go away.

“Going back to selection, when Sir Gareth Edwards, one of the greatest players of all time, said it was a slap in the face, I can’t believe it wasn’t a real motivation for the Welsh team.

“Wales won’t make changes to a winning team. With consistency comes confidence. It’s backs to the wall for the Boks and if they don’t get the proper game going, they could lose the series,” White said.

So Rassie Erasmus and SA Rugby have apologised and accepted their punishments from that perfidious body known as WorldRugby, but what will be done about all the officiating errata that has marred the game this year?

Most probably nothing because the northern hemisphere bloc that now enjoys the hegemony at WorldRugby will be too busy power-mongering and money-chasing to pay much notice to the real problems the game is facing. Rugby pundits around the world have been writing about the need to bring clarity and uniformity to the way the game is officiated for more than a decade now, and all WorldRugby seems to do is print new and even more confusing law interpretations.

The sport itself is losing credibility because fans no longer understand the laws or how they are blown. Frustrated, they end up casting aspersions on the integrity of the poor referees. It is a dangerous place for any sport to be when you are alienating your own supporters.

While Erasmus’s hour-long video was perhaps a bit too much like starting a riot for WorldRugby’s authoritarian tastes, a rant was inevitable following British and Irish Lions coach Warren Gatland being able to get away with questioning the integrity of South African Marius Jonker when he was appointed TMO shortly before the first Test due to Covid restrictions that stopped Brendan Pickerill from travelling from New Zealand.

Predictably, the 50/50 calls went the Lions’ way, but Erasmus was more upset with the poor refereeing of Australian Nic Berry.

But it’s not just Erasmus who has lashed out at officials this year. Wallabies coach Dave Rennie was publicly furious over how his team were treated by the officials on their European tour and rugby fans in South Africa were eagerly awaiting news of what action would be taken against him, especially since Jonker was the target of his rage, even though on a couple of key decisions he was left trying to find compelling evidence to overturn the referee’s on-field decision.

WorldRugby ended up just issuing Rennie a written warning on Friday.

Losing teams are always going to have one or two gripes to complain about, and generally the side that wins would have had a couple of decisions go against them too. But the mathematics of the recent officiating seems to have swung well away from 50/50.

Things are not adding up too often for WorldRugby to continue to turn a blind eye to this crisis.

Speaking about adding up, England conceded 11 second-half penalties against the Springboks last weekend as the pressure mounted on them, but there were no team warnings, no yellow cards. The great Nigel Owens stated in his column in the Telegraph that he felt South Africa were especially unfortunate not to get more reward out of their dominant scrum.

But the Springboks obviously don’t want to dare say anything critical and just add to the bans and fines WorldRugby are launching their way.

We can only hope that as one of their New Year’s Resolutions, WorldRugby can find it in their hearts to sort out the officiating crisis and placate the bee’s nest that has been stirred up this year. Of course referees will err and no-one wants to see them put under undue pressure.

But when the governing body turns a blind eye to accountability across the board, then it puts the high-stakes international game, made even more tense by bubble life, under untenable strain.

Rassie Erasmus may not be in Queensland with the Springboks, but it is business as usual for coach Jacques Nienaber and his unusual relationship with his director of rugby when it comes to coaching the South African rugby team.

Erasmus is back in South Africa still waiting for a date to be set for his misconduct hearing after WorldRugby took exception to the 62-minute long video that he made pointing out all the refereeing mistakes made in the first Test against the British and Irish Lions. The former Springbok loose forward has had a far more hands-on relationship with the team than other directors of rugby around the world, who tend to be paper-pushers in plush offices.

“We had a conversation 10-15 minutes ago, so life goes on as per normal,” Nienaber said on Wednesday when asked at the team announcement whether he was missing Erasmus. “We operate a bit differently to the usual director of rugby/coach relationship because we are not confined by job titles. We don’t work like that. We know we have certain responsibilities, the team understands how that works, and even with the assistant coaches, we all have input in each other’s responsibilities.

“The one positive of Covid is that technology has made the world very small – you can be in someone else’s living room in 10 minutes. Rassie has flipped his day and night around to fit in with our schedule and sometimes he’s in our team meetings, he’s a part of us whenever he can join in. So it’s business as usual. He was also not with us for the first Test against Argentina.”

The last time the Springboks were in Australia was in Septmber 2018 when they lost 23-18 to the Wallabies in nearby Brisbane. They made many dumb mistakes that day, looked one-dimensional and sorely lacking in confidence. In the week after that stuttering display, Erasmus said he did not expect to keep his job if things then went badly against the All Blacks in Wellington the following week. But South Africa won in New Zealand for the first time since 2009, to the astonishment of everybody.

But back then they were still emerging from their years in the wilderness and have gone from strength-to-strength since.

“Last time we were in Australia, it was our sixth game working together with Rassie. From then a lot of things have been implemented. We installed a new defensive system in 2018 which the players were still getting used to, and they were finding their feet in terms of playing style.

“We’re now a lot more settled, we’ve been together for quite a few Tests now. We’ve only lost a handful of players since then, so our continuity has been good. We’re a lot more aligned – that’s the good difference between us then and now,” Nienaber said.