Rassie Erasmus explains why Springboks ditched the 6-2 split and the ‘very unlucky’ snub for All Blacks clash

The Springboks bench for the second Test match against the All Blacks features just five forwards for the showdown in Cape Town.

Rassie Erasmus has reverted to the more conventional bench set-up for the encounter against New Zealand, a ‘luxury’ afforded to the team by Pieter-Steph du Toit according to the Bok boss.

Ditching the 6-2

South Africa have favoured the 6-2 and 7-1 splits for the biggest Test matches recently but they have changed tack for the round four Rugby Championship clash.

“Sometimes there are games where you want to grow your team and sometimes there are games where you desperately want to win,” Erasmus explained.

“I think trying to win this game would mean a lot in the final two rounds of the Rugby Championships and not to say you want your best players on the field you want your best players in the group.”

The Boks bossed explained that the return of Canan Moodie from injury and his inclusion in the starting XV is to combat the All Blacks’ speed in the backline, which is why they have opted for more backs this time around.

“I think he’s over all his injuries and we feel it’s a game where we definitely will have to match the speed with which they played last week and we think having three backs on the bench will help in that regard,” he added.

Obviously Kurt-Lee is out and we don’t forget the guys like Canan and what they’ve done for us before. Mapimpi’s wife is giving birth this week and we don’t want to keep him away from that so that’s why Canan is in here and we all know, if you haven’t been in the set-up for long, then it takes a bit to get used but Canan knows us well.

“He came in as a 19-year-old boy against Australia away and had a magnificent game and’s really playing well since.”

The Springboks bench also consists of two back-rowers with no lock cover and Erasmus explained that Du Toit’s versatility allows them to do this but it also means that Salmaan Moerat is ‘very unlucky’ not to make the team.

“I think a guy like Salmaan Moerat is very unlucky not to be in this team so to unpack it, two loose forwards on the bench, then Pieter-Steph du Toit covers lock, so we can probably put on the two loose forwards on in some way,” he said.

“But it we will probably give us almost a 6-2 split in terms of momentum because Pieter-Steph is a guy who can play 80, 80 and 80 and somewhere we will have to give him a rest.”

Delayed Springboks’ team announcement

Springboks fans are used to knowing the matchday 23 on Tuesdays but that was not the case this week. Erasmus explained that this will be a one-off as the Springboks did not want to cause confusion again if there were changes to the team later in the week particularly around Siya Kolisi’s injury.

This after, he named his team for the opening Test last Tuesday before adding Eben Etzebeth to the bench the following day.

“The thing is, we don’t always want to upset the media, we thought that announcing it on a Tuesday was better for everybody including us as a team because we announce it at 8:00 on Mondays internally and then if you announce it on Tuesday we felt all the speculations is out of the way,” he said.

“The people can write about personal profiles and why we picked teams and give you a little bit more of an angle and we’ve got nothing to hide.

In the Eben case last week, I really don’t understand why people didn’t understand that, the guy was injured on Monday he went for x-rays and the doctors said it would probably be a 10-day or a-week injury and then he just trained on Monday and that’s the only reason why we did change the team.

“And then this week with this specific team we decided to announce it on Thursday so hopefully everybody’s happy and then next week we’ll do our Tuesday thing again.”