Sir Steve Hansen’s verdict on Rassie Erasmus’ depth building: ‘It’s that mindset of we don’t care’

Legendary All Blacks boss Sir Steve Hansen has praised the way Rassie Erasmus is building depth with the Springboks.

South Africa defeated a near-full-strength Scotland team 42-28 at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday in round two of the Nations Championship, despite Erasmus making 10 changes to his starting XV from the side that beat England a fortnight ago.

Experienced campaigners Handre Pollard, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Damian Willemse and Jesse Kriel were named in the run-on team against Scotland, but the Boks had just 429 international caps in the starting line-up, a tally that paled in comparison to their opponent’s 628.

In fact, five of the starting forward pack had less than 10 caps, while that number was two in the backs and five on the bench.

Despite the inexperience, the Boks managed to secure a win over a strong Scotland team who were only missing a handful of star players like Blair Kinghorn, Huw Jones and Darcy Graham, with Erasmus also experimenting with players like Pollard, who shifted to centre, and Lions full-back Quan Horn who came on at fly-half.

Sir Steve Hansen’s verdict on Springboks’ depth

Hansen, who was part of back-to-back Rugby World Cup-winning campaigns with the All Blacks, the latter as head coach, praised the manner in which Erasmus is building the depth and the performance of South Africa against the Scots.

“Well, the first thing you’ve got to take is they’re building some wonderful depth, and they are doing that deliberately. You look at the French team, and they are doing the same thing,” he said of the Boks on the Rugby Unity podcast.

“I think back to the past when we [the All Blacks] tried to do that and said we wanted a squad of two teams, so 30 players that you could pick and wouldn’t make any difference – and I think that’s what’s happening with South Africa.

“It’s that mindset of we don’t care who we pick. We’re good enough. We’ve got enough players to challenge.”

The former All Blacks boss added that in order to develop that kind of depth, players actually have to take the field in Test matches. However, the team still needs to have world-class operators.

“The idea is having four or five world-class players in the discussion all the time,” Hansen continued.

“If you can have more than that, great, but you can’t develop people if they don’t play. So, they’re using the tournament, they’re using games to do that, and they’re getting success with it.”

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Stats can lie

Another takeaway he gleaned from the match was that Scotland beat the Springboks in just about every statistic, except for the scoreline.

“The other thing I took out of the game is once again stats don’t always tell you the truth,” he remarked.

“Scotland had more possession; they had 64% of the ball. They made double the contact metres, and if you just looked at the stats, you would say Scotland won the game. But what we forget is you’ve actually got to do how accurate you are with the ball you’ve got? What do you do with it? If you’re very good at scoring tries, you’re not going to have a lot of possession because you have to give it back to them to kick off all the time.

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“There were what, 10 tries in that game, so it was a wonderful game of footy – played at pace. Scotland were brave but just weren’t good enough to beat them.”

South Africa’s focus now shifts to Wales in Durban with Erasmus naming his team for the clash on Monday. The head coach has included four uncapped players in his matchday 23, including young fly-half Vusi Moyo.

Tighthead prop Carlu Sadie also earns a first cap for the Springboks, as do winger Jaco Williams and lock Ruben van Heerden. There are 537 caps in the starting XV this week, with Malcolm Marx (88), Cobus Reinach (51), Damian de Allende (98), Du Toit (97) and Kriel (89) being the most experienced members of the team.

READ MORE: Springboks: Rassie Erasmus backing ‘nice and calm’ rookie to shine against Wales