Sam Warburton would ‘run through brick walls’ for Rassie Erasmus as Wales legend reveals admiration for ‘uncompromising’ Springboks
Springboks head coach Rassie Erasmus and Wales and Lions legend Sam Warburton.
Wales and Lions legend Sam Warburton says he was never intimidated by playing the Springboks and instead relished the challenge.
The former flanker hailed both their head coach, Rassie Erasmus, and the physicality South Africa has always embraced.
Following a difficult couple of seasons for the Boks under Allister Coetzee, Erasmus replaced the former Stormers boss and went back to their roots.
They focused on set-piece, defence, kicking and simply hitting hard in contact, something which has paid off handsomely with back-to-back Rugby World Cup wins.
Those triumphs were detailed in the Chasing the Sun documentary, which went behind the scenes of South Africa’s World Cup campaigns in Japan and France.
‘I loved playing South Africa’
“Rugby is a physical, uncompromising sport where 99 per cent of the time the more physical team wins. At that level, everyone’s skilled, we’ve all got tactics, we’ve all got skill, we’ve all got fitness, but it’s often the ones with that physicality and emotion that, when you equate everything else, comes through,” Warburton told The Big Jim Show, hosted by former Scotland lock Jim Hamilton.
“I watched that and I thought, ‘yes’, because that’s how I played the game. I actually loved playing South Africa the most because I loved that physical and emotional challenge that they brought.
“If you’re that minded, that’s what you want to be up against.”
Rassie Erasmus: ‘This is definitely not the strongest Springboks team’
The Springboks and the All Blacks are the two most successful sides in international rugby and are often considered the biggest challenges for an opposition player in the sport.
They have their own unique identities, something which may scare certain players, but not Warburton, who relished taking on both teams.
“People are like, ‘what’s it like facing facing the haka and facing South Africa?’ They wanted you to go, ‘it’s intimidating’, but I loved it, I fricking loved it,” he said.
“But they embrace that and they showed it on Chasing the Sun.”
Praise for Rassie
Erasmus has been the mastermind behind their revival since he came on board as director of rugby and head coach in 2018.
He is renowned for his ingenuity on a tactical level but he also has an ability to inspire his team and certainly does not shy away from the physical and emotional side of the game.
“That’s a coach I would run through brick walls for because that’s the game. You can imagine my coaches, the ones I really liked – [Warren] Gatland, Shaun Edwards, Andy Farrell – they all lean into that side,” Warburton added.
“They don’t say it in press conferences because they know people might not like it. There’s many things to win a game but that’s a massive part of winning games.
“South Africa are putting it all out there, ‘this is how we win rugby’, and that’s their superpower. They lent into it and showed the world it, and I loved the fact they did that, so credit to them.”
