How Rassie Erasmus selects teams makes ‘experimentation’ possible as ex-Wallabies boss hails ‘magical player’ and likens Springbok to All Blacks legend
Springboks Damian Willemse and Jesse Kriel with an inset of head coach Rassie Erasmus.
Former Wallabies head coach Ewen McKenzie believes that Rassie Erasmus relies on certain players to make his experimentation possible.
The Springboks head coach has heavily rotated his starting team in the opening three Tests of the Nations Championship, making 10 changes to his starting XV from round one to two – matching that tally for the clash against Wales this weekend.
Several players have also made their Test debuts this month, with the final game in Durban seeing four more added to the list in winger Jaco Williams, fly-half Vusi Moyo, lock Ruben van Heerden and tighthead prop Carlu Sadie.
Whilst Erasmus has chopped and changed his team frequently for the first Tests of the international season, there have been a handful of consistent features, most notably stand-in captain Pieter-Steph du Toit and outside centre Jesse Kriel – the former closing in on 100 Test caps while the latter earns his 90th this weekend.
Rassie’s selections make experimentation possible – Ewan McKenzie
McKenzie believes that this is by design, with the pair forming part of the ‘core players’ in the Springboks team and are important members of the starting XV.
“South Africa picked a different team, and Scotland had the right type of game to trouble them a little bit, and they did,” he said on the Rugby Unity podcast, where he was joined by ex-All Blacks boss Sir Steve Hansen.
“But Steve is right when you look through the stats, it was all Scotland – like amazing stats, you’d think they’d win the game easily.
“Rassie picks his teams, and there’s always a core of players he goes to. He plays a lot of guys in the forwards, but he picks Pieter-Steph du Toit because he is a magical player and plays Jesse Kriel at 13.”
McKenzie spoke glowingly of Kriel, who captained the Springboks for the first time in 2025, likening the veteran back to legendary All Blacks centre Conrad Smith.
“He is probably like a Conrad Smith in terms of he sort of organises the defence,” he said.
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“He’s clearly a good communicator. He’s aggressive and on his game. So, he always has key players that are still out there. Even though Rassie is experimenting elsewhere, he’s got key individuals – they’re obviously important.
“In the end, they rely on their power game, and that rewards them. They’re able to go to that. Again, they didn’t have much territory, but when they got up there, they convert. So I don’t know what you know as a percentage, but when they get into the 10 meters in the goal line, they’re pretty efficient at making sure they get across the line.”
Springboks: Rassie Erasmus backing ‘nice and calm’ rookie to shine against Wales
Handre Pollard’s impact versus Scotland
The clash against Scotland also saw the return of Handre Pollard in the Green and Gold jersey, with the 32-year-old producing a man-of-the-match performance which included a flawless kicking display.
Pollard slotted five conversions against the Scots, with Quan Horn adding another after the fly-half sustained a hamstring injury. His 10 points at Loftus took him to 835 international points for the Boks and within striking distance of South Africa’s all-time leading points scorer Percy Montgomery (893).
“The other thing was Pollard’s goal kicking; he’s a very experienced campaigner, and his goal kicking makes the scoreline 42-28 at the end,” McKenzie added.
“If you take out the fact that he missed a few conversions, you’ve got a much closer game. He was kicking everything, so that’s important as well to make sure you grab every point you can.”
