Satisfied Erasmus calls for improvement from Boks

Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus described the team’s convincing victory against Italy at the Allianz Stadium, Turin, on Saturday as “satisfying”, but he was open about the importance of improving on their performance with two massive matches against France and Ireland ahead.

The Boks got the first of their Nations Championship Northern Series matches off to a strong start, scoring six tries for a convincing 45-0 halftime lead, and they added a further three tries in the second stanza and conceded only one for the rewarding 66-7 victory.

Unfortunately, Erasmus was forced to make a late change just before the kick-off as Salmaan Moerat withdrew from the match-23 after picking up a niggle in the warm-up, which saw Lood de Jager start the match and Franco Mostert slot in on the bench, but this did little to disrupt the team in the first half.

“Salmaan had a little bit of a back spasm on Thursday, but we thought it would clear up,” said Erasmus.

“He looked good at the captain’s practice, but unfortunately in the warm-up he got more back spasms, so hopefully it’s not too serious. He’s the only casualty we have from the game. I don’t think there are any other serious injuries.”

Commenting on the team’s performance, Erasmus said: “It’s almost impossible to put 80 minutes together at 100%. Obviously, we’re not happy with the second half. We scored 45 points in the first half, and the final score was 66, so we got another 21 points in the second half.

“Italy are a proud team, and despite being 45 points down, they started running the ball from everywhere, while we also made some changes that we wanted to see, and with that one loses a bit of rhythm. But when you win 66–7, I don’t think you can start nitpicking problems in the second half. It wasn’t perfect, but it was proper.

“That said, we have to play much better than this if we want to be competitive against France and Ireland. But it’s nice to know that after being a month away from one other, the boys got together and played like that.”

Erasmus said he was happy with the Boks’ discipline: “I think we only conceded one penalty in the first half, and about five penalties and five turnovers in the game, which is pretty disciplined, even though the second half was a little soft.”

Asked what the main contributing factors were to the team’s ability to consistently keep building, Erasmus said: “The biggest thing is that we’ve been together for eight years now, and we’re slowly bringing in guys like Ethan (Hooker), ‘Krappie’ (Morne van den Berg), Sacha (Feinberg-Mngomezulu), Ruan (Nortje), Cameron (Hanekom), Jan-Hendrik (Wessels), and Thomas (du Toit) is now back with us too.

“So we’ve been able to bring people in here and there, and when you go to a game like this and pick a team that’s match fit and ready, and everybody is calm and understands the system because we’ve been coaching them for a while, it’s satisfying.”

The team will depart for Paris later on Saturday evening where they will turn their focus to Friday’s Test against France at the Stade de France.