All Blacks hero: ‘Rassie Erasmus is one of rugby’s great minds but I saw selection trick coming a mile back’
Springboks head coach Rassie Erasmus and former All Blacks Stephen Donald.
Rugby World Cup winner Stephen Donald believes that Rassie Erasmus was rather predictable with his Springboks team selection for Saturday’s clash.
South Africa’s head coach is renowned for coming up with tactical innovations or even making mass changes from game-to-game.
However, Donald correctly predicted that Erasmus would be more conservative with his 23 for the huge Eden Park encounter having picked the experienced Handre Pollard and Willie le Roux in the key playmaking axis.
‘There will be a lot of kicking’
“I know Rassie is one of the great rugby minds, without a doubt – two-time World Cup-winning champ and comes up with innovation no one’s ever had – but I must admit, there were a few selections I saw coming. I read the room on this one,” he said on The Aftermatch with Kirst and Beav.
“Rassie often has a few tricks up his sleeve but on this occasion I saw the Le Roux, Pollard trick coming a mile back.
“It will be a very disciplined, very orchestrated, constructed attack from the Springboks. Two great kickers of the ball, two minds that are an extension of their coach and the coach knows what those two in particular will dish out for him.
“There will be a lot of kicking, a lot of aerial game. They would have seen all the conjecture and hysteria around the high ball from the New Zealand public and the All Blacks.
“They’ve been in the country for 10 days, how can you not have heard about the high ball? They will know all of that. I thought they maybe would have gone Faf de Klerk too, the whole axis of 9-10-15 and what they bring.”
The All Blacks may be the world’s number one team but they go into the game off the back of a disappointing defeat to Argentina in the second round of the Rugby Championship.
South Africa also suffered a shock loss, this time to the Wallabies, but they bounced back from that defeat to overcome Australia in the second fixture.
Where All Blacks can hurt Springboks
Donald certainly rates the team that Erasmus has selected but believes that there are areas which Scott Robertson’s side can attack this weekend.
“It’s not without a few opportunities for the All Blacks. It is a wonderfully strong-looking team. You look at that and go, ‘wow’, but the All Blacks have had two weeks to work out how we’re going to nullify the kicking game,” he said.
“You try and disrupt their ball in the first place and then you go after their ruck. If it’s a little bit disjointed at times or they set the caterpillar and you can get away with coming in a little bit from the side and upset [Grant] Williams at half-back, who knows, maybe you can unsettle them at nine.
“What does that do? That puts more pressure on Pollard.
“It’s a wonderfully strong-looking Springboks team but I imagine Razor and his boys will be looking at that and going, ‘right, let’s have a crack here, let’s have a crack there’.”
READ MORE: Scott Robertson: It was my choice to face the Springboks at Eden Park
