"We'd be stupid to underestimate All Blacks" - Rassie

While some Springbok fans may be feeling bullish ahead of the Castle Lager Rugby Championship clash with the All Blacks, the Boks are taking it as seriously as they did the World Cup final.

Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus didn’t say it that clearly, but the intent was there as he reminded all who would listen that it would be “arrogant” to underestimate the Boks, especially given the history between the two sides.

Erasmus said the Boks would be “stupid” if they didn’t show the All Blacks respect and expected another close game between the two traditional rivals.

“No, we’ll be stupid if we don’t respect them,” he said at the team announcement.

“We’ll be bad coaches, we’ll be stupid players, we’ll be an arrogant nation, we’ll quickly be put back in our place. At No 6 or seven in the rankings which is where we started.

“It’s a team that beat England at home, it’s a team that lost to Argentina, we’ve lost to Argentina, it’s a team that has lost to Argentina before. We beat them only by one point in the World Cup.”

Erasmus defended his counterpart Scott Robertson, even though the new All Blacks coach lost unexpectedly to Argentina in the opening game of the Rugby Championship.

“I just think people must understand although Razor is a fantastic coach, and he might be the best coach in the world, and New Zealand is a rugby mad country, if you lose Richie Mo’unga all of a sudden, and the core of your Crusaders players isn’t there, and you’ve got a few injuries, and you’re trying this guy at 10, and you’ve got a captain out for the first two test matches, and you strike Argentina on the wrong day, it’s going to be the wrong day,” Erasmus said.

“That doesn’t make Razor a bad coach. We saw what happened the next week (referring to the All Blacks impressive win in the second test against Argentina), and now this weekend they’re here.”

Erasmus added that the All Blacks were, like the Boks, a work in progress, and would get better the more Robertson coached them.

“I think it’s not the settled thing. By that I’m not saying, Jodie Barrett is not settled, and Beauden Barrett is not settled, and (TJ) Perenara hasn’t played many tests.

“But it’s not like I will go out there and put my All Black team out. We could do that before we played England, in a World Cup. Maybe partly because we’re not so much involved in Super Rugby anymore, and we don’t know these players, and see these players day in and day out, and we’re just tracking them.

“Which is as we analyse them, see this guy’s profile shows a lot of this, or this guy’s profile shows a lot of this, and this guy is dangerous.”

“It’s still about, the moment you switch off, you know, Damian McKenzie would do something. Perenara, when he breaks, when he does a tap kick, it’s with experience, he knows when to try it. I think he calms things down, and then they have a great pack of forwards, which in a World Cup final, we found it tough to move around on the field, and they tried to move us around.

“So we’ve played the last 10 times against them, one draw, four losses and five wins for us. Last 10 times since we’ve played them, and it’s been two points, four points, one point. It’s going to be a really, really tight game, people should come and watch.”

Erasmus said he was looking forward to going up against Robertson, nicknamed Razor and famous for his match-winning breakdances.

“Me and him, I think he’s exactly the same size, I might be fatter than him, but age. We played all our test matches against each other, all our Crusaders matches, our Cats matches, and Free State matches, Lions matches against each other,” he said.

“I’ve had a few beers with him many a time in my life, he would know this stadium really well, I think if you go and search his Razor dance, it will be the Super Rugby trophy, where he won it here on the other day , so they’ve got too much class all around, too good a coaching system, and too good a structure in New Zealand, not to get it right, somewhere.”

The teams will face off in back to back tests, starting at Johannesburg on Saturday before the second fixture in Cape Town a week later.