Rassie Erasmus got ‘answers’ from Springboks experiments against Scotland: ‘That’s what we were trying to do’
Springboks scrum-half Embrose Papier and an inset of head coach Rassie Erasmus.
Rassie Erasmus says that it was necessary to test several inexperienced players against Scotland at Loftus Versfeld.
A much-changed and youthful Springbok team secured a 42-28 victory over Gregor Townsend’s men at the home of the Bulls on Saturday evening in round two of the Nations Championship, with Erasmus fielding 12 players with fewer than 10 Test caps against the Scots.
While the Springboks are dealing with an ever-growing injury list, Erasmus still opted to leave out multiple experienced and double World Cup-winning players for the fixture against Scotland, as the coaching team continues to plan for the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia.
It’s not a new ploy from Erasmus, having heavily rotated players and handed opportunities in Test matches building up to the 2019 and 2023 tournaments, with South Africa notably falling to defeats to Wales (2018 and 2022) as well as in Tests against Argentina.
Rassie pleased to be learning while winning
However, he is pleased that this time around, the coaches are learning about the team whilst winning matches.
“There was a stage since 2018 when we were losing, when we were learning who can do it and who still needs some work at this level,” he said after the win over Scotland.
“If you look at the Scotland team, and this is not to try to make our performance look better, but we knew when they flew over and the way they had smashed Argentina, beat England, beat France, and they played in February together.
“We had half a team (12 players) of guys who have 10 caps or less, so cohesion was always going to be a problem; you could see that in the defence when we made some subs at the end. Obviously there are a lot of guys that we did not play in this game, and a lot of them are injured. So yes, we learned a lot about players, not that they’re not good enough, but there’s a lot of work to do on that.
“The only guys missing for Scotland were probably Blair Kinghorn, Tom Jordan – I think he is a brilliant player – and maybe Huw Jones. This is a team that’s fourth or fifth in the world and who beat France and England.
“This was a Test that some of the guys needed – not a tier two nation where they got three or four caps. A tier one nation that’s really, really a class team.”
Risking defeat, knowing South Africans will understand
It was a risk from Erasmus and his staff as the Springboks entered the game on a nine-Test winning streak, at the top of the World Rugby rankings and on top of the Nations Championship table.
While the head coach is in the good graces of the South African public, he is wary that can change and change quickly but said he believed that the supporters understood what the team was trying to do against Scotland.
“I don’t think the crowd was happy at the end, but I think South Africa understands what we tried to do in this game,” he said.
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“In the past I felt if we made four changes people would ask ‘what are you doing?’ But I feel the interaction between us and the supporters – through the media – gives us a togetherness and people know what we are trying to do. I think that’s something that’s changed over the years.
“It’s the crowd believing in the team and the team believing in South Africa, because they could easily have gone against us with those easy tries we gave away, but there’s a few players who haven’t done it at this level.
“If we lose the knives will be out – but for me the most important thing is learning about the players. If we had lost this game, I think there would be some of the crowd who would understand what we tried to do – but luckily we won.”
Some players made it, others didn’t
Since reclaiming the head coach reins in 2024, Erasmus has used matches against Tier Two opposition to blood in new Springboks. However, he believes that it was important to test some of the players against quality opposition like Scotland to better gauge their performances.
He feels that he got answers at Loftus with many players still having a lot to do to remain in the squad, while others proved that they are ready for the highest level.
“I’m not trying to butter up the performance, and the Georgians will kill me (for saying this), but we could wait until we play Georgia and then a guy does pretty well but you’re not sure that the intensity is the same as a team that beat England, France and Argentina,” he explained.
“We thought they were going to be tougher than the English because they beat England and they’re not missing any players besides Kinghorn and Jones. Now we know that a lot of guys need a lot of work to stay in the squad; some guys made it.”
Handre Pollard experiment
One of the answers concerned Handre Pollard, who was named man of the match for his efforts. The starting fly-half was initially replaced early in the second half but was brought back onto the park after Ethan Hooker was forced off for an HIA.
Upon his return, the coaching team opted to field Pollard at inside centre with Quan Horn shifting into the fly-half channel. The latter could have easily moved to the wing or to full-back with Aphelele Fassi on the park too, but Erasmus explained that they purposefully continued their experiments against the Scots and he got an ‘answer’ on whether Pollard can do the job at inside centre in Green and Gold.
“It’s unfortunate for Ethan Hooker; his mouth guard pinged, and there wasn’t a head knock with him. We went with a 6-2 split and Canan didn’t pull through; then Ethan went off, but Handre went to 12 and got man of the match.
“We have been training with Handre at 12 for the last four weeks so we got an answer there as well – that’s what we were trying to do.”
