Sir John Kirwan stirs the pot with Rassie Erasmus comments and makes Springboks ‘incredibly strong favourites’
All Blacks legend Sir John Kirwan believes that “all the pressure’s on” the Springboks ahead of the key Rugby Championship double-header.
South Africa host New Zealand for two Test matches in games which are likely to decide the Rugby Championship title.
The Boks have won both of their fixtures so far in impressive fashion, while the All Blacks slipped to a shock defeat to Argentina in Round One.
Although Scott Robertson’s men recovered to thrash Los Pumas 42-10 in Auckland on Saturday, they are very much playing catch-up to the double defending world champions.
South Africa made 10 alterations for the Perth clash but they still managed to ease to a 30-12 success over the Wallabies.
Rassie’s narrative
Rassie Erasmus’ selection call was seen as a risky strategy, but Kirwan isn’t buying that narrative and insists that the Boks are “incredibly strong favourites” against the All Blacks at home.
“Rassie put that out through the media that it was the ‘B’ side. We know that they have 33 international players at the moment,” he said on The Breakdown.
“I think for me, these guys are world champions. They go in incredibly strong favourites.”
Kirwan then turned to the camera with a message to Springboks supporters, saying: “Welcome to my South African friends, you are favourites in a couple of weeks, so all the pressure’s on you.”
The former wing was once again impressed by what he saw from Erasmus’ men but also added that the Wallabies were simply poor.
“They play to their strengths, they’ve got an amazing coach who’s innovative and moves forward,” Kirwan said.
“I think Australia made some really basic errors at the wrong time. Poor old [Noah] Lolesio had to kick that on the stroke of half-time to keep creating pressure. They just let them off the hook.
“They dropped the ball when they didn’t need to; you cannot makes those mistakes at international level, and you cannot make those mistakes against South Africa particularly.”
‘Hard’ task in South Africa
One victory in South Africa would probably be deemed a success for the All Blacks, given that they are under new management and in transition, but that would likely end their Rugby Championship hopes.
“We will probably have to win both games to win the Rugby Championship, that’s going to be hard,” Kirwan’s fellow All Blacks great, Jeff Wilson, said.
“They bombed a couple of tries in the first half [against Australia], a couple of gimmes. They’ve shown in two Test matches that they’ve got a couple of different game plans.
“They’ve got one they know they can go to, and they’re starting to develop another one when the conditions are a little bit better.
“We have to be concerned on the evidence on what they’ve done to Australia.”
