Springboks: Schalk Brits gives fascinating insight into the meticulous Rassie Erasmus

Former Springboks hooker Schalk Brits insists that Rassie Erasmus will not be looking for excuses from their Ireland defeat as they seek to win their first Rugby Championship title since 2019.

South Africa bounced back from their 25-24 home loss to Andy Farrell’s men by defeating Portugal 64-21 last Saturday, but the Boks will still be stewing over that result in Durban.

They are now looking ahead to the annual southern hemisphere tournament, hoping to eradicate the mistakes that cost them almost two weeks ago.

Last act not a factor for Rassie

While Ciaran Frawley’s drop-goal was the match-winner, drawing complaints from the Springboks players that there was obstruction by Ireland captain Caelan Doris in the build-up, Brits believes that Erasmus will see the game differently.

“Rassie, the way he looks at it, he doesn’t look at a particular thing, he looks at trends within a game,” the 2019 Rugby World Cup winner told The Rugby Paper podcast.

“He says: ‘Where did we lose momentum? Where did we gain momentum? Was it individual errors? That’s fine, people make mistakes, people drop a ball, but where did we strategically lose this game?’”

Brits himself has a similar view of the contest. Despite improving in the second period, the Boks were physically bested by the Irishmen in the first half.

“I would rather say, when our bomb squad didn’t perform like it did, why not? What are we going to do next time we play Ireland? Or the next team we face when we can’t use our bomb squad like we want to use it,” he said.

“What can we improve on? Because that is a positive way of looking at that particular match and saying, ‘okay, when we’ve got this, what do we have to do next time?’ That’s a solution-based [mindset].”

Tactical changes

Brits looked at where it might have gone wrong for the Springboks in the second Test and discussed what Erasmus might do to switch it up tactically ahead of the Rugby Championship.

“From my perspective, when we kicked on James [Lowe] in the first Test match, he wasn’t that great, but in the second Test match he was phenomenal in the air. Maybe we should have changed strategy and put in a cross kick, and not kept kicking on him,” he said.

“We have great outside backs but not the tallest outside backs. Was the kick a little bit too far? How we (the Boks) measure kicking stats is measuring kicking metres versus running metres and the probability of winning.

“These are the things he (Erasmus) will look at, he won’t even focus on that particular issue (the drop-goal).”