‘Ultimate Rugby sh*thousery’ – Handre Pollard reveals cheeky Rassie Erasmus’ tactics

Springboks head coach Rassie Erasmus has always been an out-of-the-box thinker, and fly-half Handre Pollard has shared another example from his early coaching career.

Erasmus is renowned for looking of ways to get the slightest of edges, whether that be getting a coach on the sidelines as a waterboy or using lights to communicate with his players.

Erasmus made headlines early in his coaching career, shortly after his retirement, particularly when he sat on the stadium’s roof to flash different-coloured lights to his players to indicate to players which set moves they should do.

Rassie Erasmus’ trick

However, Pollard has revealed another one of Erasmus’ tricks that he used on opposition teams during that period when the Springboks fly-half appeared on Ben Youngs and Dan Cole’s podcast For the Love of Rugby.

“Rassie in the olden days, I’m talking way back when coached the Cheetahs,” Pollard explained.

“The boys would go for a captain’s run in the mornings, and then the opposition will come in the afternoon.

“What he used to do was take these fake lineout play sheets and he would pull them out and just leave them underneath tables and chairs and stuff in the opposition locker room with like the completely wrong lineout calls.

“And these guys will be studying, studying and they will see in the game, they would be running it in the warm-up, and Rassie would say ‘Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha.'”

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Ultimate rugby sh*thousery from Rassie Erasmus 🤣 pic.twitter.com/fPKS99kDhp

— For The Love Of Rugby (@LoveOfRugby_) June 14, 2024

Spying in Test rugby

Pollard told the story after Youngs and Cole discussed funny training incidents, and particularly when the coaches are worried about being spied on.

Eddie Jones claimed that New Zealand were spying on them in the build up to the Rugby World Cup 2019 semi-final between the two sides and the Chasing The Sun 2 documentary series showed that the Springboks also had fears of being spied on ahead of their quarter-final clash against France.

“It’s something that does happen [being spied on],” Pollard added.

“I’m sure in the past it was way worse, but it still happens, and you have to look after what you do, especially if it is a special play or something like that.

“To be fair, the place we stayed at had cameras everywhere. It was probably just a CCTV looking for criminals, but in our minds, they were filming us,” he laughed.

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