Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus was magnanimous in victory as he praised the massive improvements in the All Black game under Dave Rennie, but he also made it pretty emphatically clear, with a few expletives included, that he was tired of the opposition coach’s whingeing.
The All Blacks sounded a warning to the Boks ahead of what is now a decisive third test at Soccer City next weekend with the way they repeatedly threatened to run the home team ragged with their skilful and at times masterful running game. Faced with a 14-point deficit going into the final four minutes, the Kiwis scored a converted try that gave them a last-gasp chance of levelling the game.
That they attacked so deep into the Bok territory after the hooter was entirely down to referee Angus Gardner’s glaring miss of a blatant skew throw at the last lineout. But it was far from the only poor decision by the Australian, who was jettisoned in to take the whistle after the Georgian referee Nika Amashukeli fell sick at the 11th hour. This in a week where Rennie announced he had flagged the Boks walking around in the scrums to World Rugby.
Gardner is known to be more easily influenced than other referees, and influencing is something that Rennie has been a champion at on this tour, so it wasn’t a surprise that there was hardly a scrum penalty in the game. Instead, the game saw constant collapses, something Gardner seemed reluctant to blow.
REFEREE ABDICATED FROM CALLING THE SCRUMS
It was as if, faced with the flagging of alleged Bok walking around at scrum time, Gardner just decided to abdicate from his role when it came to that phase of the game. So that effectively took one of South Africa’s biggest weapons out of the contest, something Rennie has been working towards behind the scenes.
Asked about the scrums, Rennie said in his press conference that he was a lot happier with the way they had been refereed, with Gardner ensuring that the hookers were on their mark and the scrum stood squarer, but said there were still minor technical issues and didn’t appear to rule out another conversation with World Rugby on the matter.
When Erasmus was told that, and was himself asked about the way the scrums had been refereed, his anger and frustration came to the fore.
“It is the first time in our history that anyone has talked about us walking around,” said Erasmus.
“There were six scrum collapses, why did they collapse? The last lineout was skew. If you are going to moan about things, then you show you are the team under pressure. There were five head contacts in the first test (from the All Blacks), but we kept quiet about it. Today there were another four.
“They have tried to convince people through the media. It started early in the tour, when they complained about teams slowing the ball down. I think it should be clear now we are not slowing the ball down. It was a plan on their part. We are not f------ walking around in the scrums, we are scrumming through. We have never been accused of scrumming through before.”
KIWIS CONSTANTLY LOOK LIKE THEY ARE OFFSIDE
Erasmus might well have added to his tirade the fact that the All Blacks appear to repeatedly go offside around the fringes, a few times quite blatantly, and there was no or little help from the refereeing team for the Boks on that score.
The yellow card shown to Lood de Jager was also highly debatable given the leeway the All Blacks have been given by the two referees over both tests in that regard. If Ardie Savea’s high head shot last week wasn’t a yellow, then neither was De Jager’s, and the player appeared to be bending into the tackle.
'NO DRAMA' FOR ALL BLACK COACH OVER BOK CHANGES
One thing Rennie refused to complain about was Erasmus’ late changes to the team, and full marks to him for that. The Boks made it known an hour or so before kick-off that the chosen starting front row would be finishing the game instead, while of course Cheslin Kolbe, who was the official man of the match, was only announced as playing on Friday.
“The Bok front row thing doesn’t mean anything to me at all, there is no drama over that from my perspective,” said Rennie.
“I guess when you name your team on a Monday there is always a chance changes will be made during the week. We took minimal notice of the team on Monday. Maybe it was odd that a player like Cheslin suddenly came in, but there is not a hell of a difference between those players (he replaced Kurt-Lee Arendse), they are pretty similar. Regardless of who they name on Monday, the game plan is going to stay the same.”
Erasmus explained the decision to start with the reserve front row of Gerhard Steenekamp, Deon Fourie and Thomas du Toit around the changing weather forecast during the course of the week building up to match day.
“We thought it was going to be wet, that was the prediction. We felt we would have needed to start with our heavier front row had that been the case,” said the Bok coach.
“Then when we got closer to the game we realised the weather was going to be dry, so then we felt we needed our lighter, more mobile front row. When it comes to Cheslin, I said at the start of the week that he might come back if he proved his fitness. Kurt-Lee knew that. Maybe I should have slashed them (bracketed) in the team that was announced, but Cheslin came through the Monday practice; he was back in the mix, and when I was asked on Tuesday about it, I said that he had come through very well.”
Erasmus did indeed do both those things, so there really shouldn’t be an issue around that, and as rugby is a 23-man game now, and not a 15-man one, the unannounced front row changes shouldn’t be made an issue of either. The changes were made from within the matchday squad; players weren’t brought in unannounced from outside of the squad.”
RASSIE SAYS THIS ALL BLACK TEAM IS ON A DIFFERENT LEVEL
While clearly frustrated that Rennie doesn’t stick to what he is clearly good at, which is coaching, Erasmus did have praise for the new All Black coach - and rightly so too given the obvious transformation of the Kiwi team since Rennie took over.
“I thought we started this game really well, but we agreed afterwards in the change-room that this is a very good New Zealand team. We did lots of things better this week than we did last week and they also did a lot of things better. They are not the same as last year’s team. They are very well coached and they have athletes who can beat you on the grass. They are on a different level to where they were last year.”
They are, and the All Black attacking game was sublime at times, as shown by the fact they still managed to score four tries in a game where, for much of it, they were out-powered. With the teams locked together at 1-all, and both coaches being astute practitioners of their craft, it makes for a fascinating remainder of the series.