AFTER THE BATTLE, the beers. Late last night at Stade de France, Fabien Galthié joined Rassie Erasmus and his Springboks team for a post-match drink.
One camp was dejected, the other elated, but they shared the feeling of having been part of something special.
Their thrilling World Cup quarter-final had it all, with the South Africans emerging as victors by the slimmest of margins.
As the dust settled today and while his players enjoyed an afternoon off, Erasmus summed it up.
“It was two teams that tactically, physically, and mentally tried to really push one another to the edge,” said the Springboks director of rugby, who admitted that the final whistle had brought relief.
Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber’s plans worked in Paris last night. Their intriguing matchday 23 selection proved to be cleverly constructed and they scored four tries to France’s three, while also managing the sin-bin period for Eben Etzebeth as well as they could have hoped for. That les Bleus only scored three points in that window was key.
While there were many familiar elements to the Boks’ performance, it was also a demonstration of their increased variety and Erasmus pinpointed the defeat to France last autumn as having been key in that development.
“To be honest with you, and I am serious when I say this, I will never forget that post that last French game,” he said today.
“I tweeted a few tweets and a lot of people said it was controversial but I can remember my caption there was ‘We will have to adapt and make things clearer for referees, we can’t just rely on mauling, scrumming and close-contact work where it is very difficult for the referee to make the correct decision.’ Because it’s very dynamic and it’s busy and there’s a little bit of grey areas there.
“So, we had to adapt. Also to try and score tries through more open, fluent, running rugby. And you could see in our try-scoring tally there’s a lot scored by our backs, more than our forwards.
“If you only rely on a certain aspect of the game which is very tough for the referee to referee and he gets two wrong but you only relying on those three or four of five opportunities that you get, 50% of your opportunities are gone.
“But if you fire shots in open play, general play from the top of lineouts or counter-attack, it’s clearer decisions for the referee and easier to make.
“As a team, we don’t want to be this wonderful playing rugby team that the whole world loves, but we do want to score tries.”
The Boks might not care what the world thinks of them but they do care about their relationship with referees, said Erasmus. He has stepped across the line with his criticism of match officials in the past, most notably during the 2021 Lions tour, but the former Munster boss said their entire approach towards referees has changed.
France captain Antoine Dupont criticised referee Ben O’Keeffe immediately after last night’s game, but Erasmus – who chatted to former referee Nigel Owens this morning – said he was happy.
“Since we’ve changed our way, no matter if we are correct and the referees are wrong, respect must always be shown,” said Erasmus.
“Our whole motto has been ‘Let’s respect the referees.’ It works both ways. He’s going to make mistakes, we’re going to make mistakes. The frustration we had in the past and the lack of communication because of various things with Covid, that’s in the past. There’s a nice protocol in place, it’s easy to communicate to them.
“I wouldn’t like to comment on what they [France] said about the referee. We’re just working on accepting that there will be mistakes on both sides, which is something that we had to get right and we had to earn the respect back and I think it’s slowly happening.”
As The Boks now look towards their clash with England this Saturday in the semi-finals, Erasmus is happy with the condition of his squad.
The South Africans opted to rotate their team during the World Cup pool stages, in contrast to a team like Ireland, who went nearly full-strength throughout their time in the competition.
“Our average player is 162 minutes in the World Cup,” said Erasmus.
“Matches before the World Cup where we played Rugby Championship and we played Wales and New Zealand again, I know people got frustrated when we were chopping and changing and I am not saying I am right, luckily, touch wood, up until this morning we don’t have any injuries from last night’s game.
“I couldn’t talk for other teams but I do know us and the England team will definitely have a close match because their numbers of spreading the load is not so much higher than ours.”
The South Africans are 14-point favourites against the English, but Erasmus said nothing will be taken for granted in his camp.
“If we think England is bad because people from outside say that they are not doing well, our reality is the truth, not the reality that people create outside our camp.