If there was one message common to both the first two episodes of Chasing the Sun, it was that a big part of the Springbok success at Rugby World Cup 2019 was down to them having a coach who was brave enough to make decisions others would have avoided.
In the first episode we saw how Erasmus put everything into one basket in his first year as coach, with the Rugby Championship clash against the All Blacks in Wellington attracting an inordinate amount of early focus on the basis that beating New Zealand in New Zealand would be the one big step the team could make towards regaining lost Bok pride and gaining belief.
Erasmus rested a few players in preparation for his all or nothing clash with the All Blacks in 2018 and as it turned out it was again Wellington where he made his first major gamble of the World Cup year. At least that was the way others would have seen it. To Erasmus it wasn’t a gamble. It was what had to be done.
As Jesse Kriel, the Bok centre put it, “Some call him crazy, I say he’s a genius!”
MORE THAN LIP SERVICE TWO SQUAD SYSTEM
Instead of resting just a few players this time, he sent 10 members of his first choice team to New Zealand ahead of the rest of the squad. The two squad system has been used by the All Blacks before. In 2017 when they came to South Africa to play the Boks in Cape Town, they sent out an advance guard that arrived in the country before the All Blacks had played their Championship game against Argentina in Buenos Aires.
While the policy adopted by All Black coach Steve Hansen was admired by Erasmus’ predecessors, Erasmus was the first South African coach to give more than just lip-service to the concept.
Why this was considered such a major gamble was because it meant that the Boks that stayed behind had to front the first Championship game of the year against Australia in Johannesburg. The Wallabies have a poor record at Emirates Airlines Park, but that is also one of the reasons selecting what most critics would have considered an understrength team was such a big call. Losing to Australia on their least favourite ground would have been a major setback and Erasmus admits now that it could have gone two ways.
A home defeat to the Wallabies in the opening international game of the final build-up phase to the World Cup could have been a major psychological blow for a team that had finished the previous year with just a 50%-win record and basing most of it’s confidence on what had happened at the Sky Stadium in Wellington in 2018.
A BACKFIRE COULD HAVE HAD DIRE CONSEQUENCES
An opening game can determine the narrative of a World Cup year, or any international season for that matter. Ask Erasmus’ immediate predecessor, Alistair Coetzee, about the latter. He started on the wrong foot in 2016 with the defeat to Ireland in Cape Town and never really recovered.
And those who remember the loss to Japan as the most notable defeat of the Bok quest for glory in the 2015 World Cup under Heyneke Meyer’s coaching are perhaps forgetting a perhaps even more impactful game when it came to determining the Bok mood going into the tournament. That was the unexpectedly one-sided defeat to Argentina at King’s Park in the home Rugby Championship clash when Meyer had by his own admission driven his players too hard.
At the time some of Erasmus’ critics wondered if he was hedging his bets a bit, perhaps protecting himself with his selection. In the sense that a defeat in Johannesburg could then perhaps be explained away by saying “Well, it wasn’t the strongest Bok team, the first-choice players were in New Zealand”.
But in watching episode 2 of Chasing the Sun it becomes clear that wasn’t Erasmus’ thinking. It was all about his ongoing psychological warfare with the All Blacks. Knowing that the Kiwis were his team’s first opponents at the World Cup, and probably the main competitors for the trophy, Erasmus was determined not to lose any psychological ground that had been gained in the 2018 win.
“They have elected to play the game against us in Wellington again, the All Blacks never play the same opponents at the same venue in succession, there is a reason for that, and that is that they really want to win this game,” Erasmus told his troops. He reasoned that for New Zealand rugby, the choice of venue was significant - they wanted to quickly atone for what had happened the year before.
Erasmus wasn’t convinced the two-squad system that he adopted for that stage of the year was such a huge gamble because never saw the division between first- and second-string teams that perhaps the rest of us did.
“Is there really that much of a difference between Eben Etzebeth and RG Snyman, and between Franco Mostert and Lood de Jager?”
UNEARTHING A NEW WARRIOR
He does make a good point there, and Etzebeth, who led the Boks in Johannesburg, reckoned the media calling his team the B side was a big motivation in the comprehensive bonus point win. But at the same time, with Etzebeth being one of the few exceptions, it was clear that the more experienced players were in New Zealand. The side that was fronting the Wallabies had a new look to it. And young scrumhalf Herschel Jantjies was making his debut.
That selection was a gamble in a sense. Jantjies had been playing Vodacom Cup rugby at the start of the previous year for the Stormers and had only made his Super Rugby debut much later. He was a new kid on the block in senior provincial rugby in South Africa and Erasmus had never been afraid to admit to his aversion to picking inexperienced players for a World Cup.
But Erasmus is big on warrior spirit, and early in his exposure to Jantjies he became convinced that the Stormers scrumhalf had the attitude he was looking for. He threw Jantjies in at the deep end to see if he would sink or swim.
As it turned out Jantjies did more than just swim, he scored two debut tries. Much of the second episode is about Jantjies and his journey, and what he exemplified for the Boks, as well as about Makazole Mapimpi, the wing who was playing in obscurity for Border when the last World Cup was played in 2015 yet rose meteorically to become a World Cup winner.
A DAY WHEN THE COACH'S DIRECTION WAS IGNORED
Jantjies’ performance in an excellent Springbok win earned him selection onto the bench for the Wellington game a week later, and he took the pass from Cheslin Kolbe to score the try that enabled Handre Pollard to kick the conversion that drew the game.
But that late try nearly never happened because Erasmus went in the heat of the moment against the adventurousness that had driven his two-squad selection policy. A few minutes before the end, Erasmus had sent the message out to the team that they must play conservative rugby. They were trailing by seven points, and that meant they’d secure a bonus point if the score remained that way.
Erasmus’ thinking was that a narrow away loss would be enough to retain some of the Bok pride and confidence ahead of the much more important meeting in Yokohama less than two months later and, perhaps more significantly, the bonus point would give his team a good chance of winning the Championship.
The players speak about how they told Erasmus to get lost. Duane Vermeulen said that the Springboks had an attitude that they refused to concede an inch on the field, and fullback Willie le Roux said the players were determined not to lose to the All Blacks.
“I don’t think this team just stops, just settles for a bonus point,” said Le Roux.
Erasmus remembers the players being very emphatic in turning down his message, which was relayed to them by assistant coach Jacques Nienaber.
“Obviously they said f… you, we want to win this match,” said Erasmus. “When I saw Willie sweeping across I knew there was something on.”
And, of course, it proved to be the right attitude and took the Boks to Japan a few weeks later believing more than ever that they could win the World Cup.