Rassie Erasmus: ‘I’m embarrassed, we were dogs–t’
Springboks head coach Rassie Erasmus and South African players dejected while Wallabies celebrate.
Rassie Erasmus could not hide his disappointment following the Springboks’ 38-22 defeat to Australia at Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg.
South Africa scored all 22 of their points in the opening 18 minutes but they epically imploded in the final hour of the match, conceding 38 unanswered points.
Credit to Australia
Erasmus said that the Boks coaches had to shoulder much of the blame for the result, with Joe Schmidt’s side tactically outplaying South Africa.
“This is one of the most embarrassing press conferences I’ve done in a long time,” the Springboks boss said after the game. “Not just because we were awful, but they were very good and credit to them.”
Starting well before letting the opposition back into the game occurred in the first Test match against Italy earlier this year, and Erasmus was annoyed that it reared its ugly head again on Saturday.
“It was the same against Italy, we were 27-3 up and then we let teams back in,” he added. “We can find excuses there but at the end of the day, they guts it out.
Springboks player ratings: Bomb Squad ‘implodes’ in an embarrassing second half
“They had a few injuries with [Will] Skelton and [Dylan] Pietsch going off. We had one or two injuries, we gave them one or two soft tries, like the intercept, but overall they were just better than us in most departments.
“We didn’t scrum them and they beat us in the lineouts. In the first 25 minutes, I thought we were really good in the breakdown after that, when Siya [Kolisi] got injured and Marco [van Staden] went for an HIA, it slipped away.
“They beat us in most departments. We as coaches got it terribly wrong and we must look firstly at ourselves.
“We know from now until next Saturday we are going to take a lot of flak; we take the credit when we do well, now we must take the flak when we do badly. We are feeling disappointed and bad for our supporters.”
Change in team selection
While the team for next weekend’s rematch with Australia in Cape Town has already been named internally, Erasmus admitted that Saturday’s performance could force a change in thinking.
“We actually already picked next week’s team, so the players actually know the team, but we had a chat now in the changing room and that will probably change,” he said.
“We’ll have to rethink it. They tactically outsmarted us and also physically dominated us. The longer the game went on it, they were supposed to struggle at altitude and it just shows what Joe Schmidt is building there.
“He has a strong group of guys who believe in one another and got stronger as the game went on. Next week’s team was announced internally but we will review it tonight.
“The saddest thing is it is five points to them and we didn’t fight back to get the bonus point back, but the Championship is far from over.
On the performance overall, Erasmus added: “I can try butter it up and bottle it up to sound cool and respectful, but we really dogshit. The effort was maybe there but the accuracy or precision wasn’t.”
READ MORE: Wallabies player ratings: Incredible veteran half-backs lead resurgent Australia to historic victory
