Boks won’t allow loss to deviate their plan

The predicted wet weather could force the Springboks into a conservative game plan in the return Castle Lager Rugby Championship test against Australia in Cape Town but there is no prospect of defeat last week forcing an abandonment of the attacking plan they’ve been working on.

When the Wallabies profited from Bok mistakes by scoring tries from more than 40 metres out it was easy to imagine that it could be a setback for the new dynamic that has been introduced since the arrival of Tony Brown as attack coach, but head coach Rassie Erasmus scoffed at any suggestion that might happen when he was asked the question on Tuesday.

While the emotion of defeat often causes coaches, players and even pundits, actually perhaps especially pundits, to suffer from an amnesia that blocks out any memory of the positives in the game, that hasn’t happened with Erasmus. He, like his experienced inside centre Damian de Allende, has a strong recall of the imperious performance of the first half.

“That first 20 minutes might have been the best 20 minutes we have ever played as a team,” said De Allende.

Erasmus doesn’t like losing and admitted it had been a tough week so far for him, but now that the emotion of the loss has worn off, and the players and management have sifted through what went wrong, there is clarity on what happened at Emirates Airlines Park and a very clear plan on how to fix it. That plan does not include abandoning what some have referred to as “Tony-ball”.

“We can’t overlook what we did in that first half and how well it went for us then and throw that away,” said Erasmus.

“If you go back to 2019 (when we won that World Cup), we played at that time like Australia played against us this past Saturday. It was a case of defend, defend, defend again and then kick it to us with the mindset of ‘we will let you guys play and if you make an error we will pounce on it’. But we don’t believe playing like that is the way to win the next World Cup in 2027.

“There is no way we will throw away what we have been working on over two or three years because of one game where it suddenly went wrong for us and we conceded three tries in quick time. We won’t do that, we have been working too hard to get some stuff in place over the last two or three years to just abandon it. We have made a lot of progress and we believe in what we are doing.”

“WE RAN OURSELVES OFF OUR FEET”

Erasmus has repeated it a few times now and it was already obvious to most critics even before he faced the post-match press conference in Johannesburg - the Boks simply ran themselves off their own feet.

“We just got over excited and when we were so far ahead we thought this is working and we must just put our foot down on the pedal. We ran ourselves off our feet. The Aussies were fresh because we all know it is a myth, I believe, that defence tires you more than attack,” said the Bok coach.

“On defence you don’t have to worry about the ball and opposition have to worry about the ball. So you can actually rest on defence. If you run yourself off your feet then when you have to defend the turnover you are all flat and then the altitude as an advantage has gone. We were chasing our own tails and that was why we lost the game. So no, we can’t throw all that hard work away. It was just one loss.

“It was very bad and the feeling is not lekker (nice) but we have to have clarity and I think Tony has brought that really well today in our attack session and yesterday with our kicking game we planned really well. I think the guys who are on the field this weekend understand how we want to play the game.”

CLARITY ON WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE

De Allende concurred with his coach that as the days since the defeat have drawn on so there has been more clarity on what went wrong in the first game and a better understanding of what needs to be done at the DHL Stadium to put the record straight.

“I do think that it might end up being a good thing that we lost and got that wakeup call. I am a big believer that everything happens for a reason,” said De Allende.

“We started well but then setbacks happened, as they do to every other team in the world. What is nice is being in a team environment where everyone knows what went wrong and everyone is on the same page. And that is a big positive for me.

"I have been in too many team environments where when things go wrong then everything just turns sour and you try and fix everything (you did before) but you don’t get the solution. We have found the solution already and that is a big positive for us.”

SEDUCED BY SPACE BUT IT WON’T HAPPEN AGAIN

According to Erasmus, part of the problem was that the Boks were seduced by the space that was opening for them at Emirates Airlines Park, which would have been why they only kicked 18 times in the game, with probably 12 of those kicks coming in the first half.

“On the day there’s space so the guys think so let’s use the space and then you do it again and again and then you knock the ball and they go and score a 40 metre try, or there is an intercept,” said Erasmus.

“I know I am repeating myself but we just got over excited and when we realised that mistake it was already too late. And then the pressure was on us in the last 15 minutes and we started chasing our tails a little bit and we couldn’t get back into the match.

"It was not an alignment issue between the attack and defence (coaches) because when we talked about stuff the last few days everyone was saying exactly the same thing.

“And I think all of you guys (the media) know what happened on Saturday, I don’t think there’s any secret about what we did - we overplayed,” he added.