SPOTLIGHT: Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus is often portrayed as a polymath of the game – a wizard thinking outside the box.
His much-disputed forwards-heavy (six-two or seven-one) bench splits are one of the conceptions that elicits the most debate.
It was again called into question during an interview with the BBC’s Rugby Union Weekly podcast at the team’s training base in Jersey.
South Africa is using the island, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands between England and France, to prepare for the year-end Tests against Scotland, England and Wales.
Erasmus explained that the initial introduction, a six-two split, was a ‘calculated’ risk.
“I was always frustrated when I sat with a reserve backline player and there’s five minutes to go and he didn’t get game time,” Erasmus told the podcast.
“It is a waste of a position, waiting for an injury.
“Then I thought, sometimes we play with a yellow card for 10 minutes and sometimes two yellow cards in a game and you survive.
“I started counting the number of matches we played and never used the last replacement.
“Then I said: ‘Why don’t we go six-two?’ That was a big thing, six-two.
“They said: ‘You can’t go six-two!’
“I said: ‘We don’t use the other back, but we will use the other forwards.’
“You can’t go six-two or seven-one if your forwards are not very close to each other, or similar – pushing one another.
“It only makes sense if they are very close to each other.
“The backline players are tough.
“You can only make an injury-enforced change or a player has a bad game – he is not firing that day.
“It was calculated, but sometimes it was risky.
“The upside is that if I didn’t try it and we lost, I would never have forgiven myself.”
* Meanwhile Erasmus admitted that he did once consider coaching another nation, but has said there is no chance that it will happen now.
He has been involved with the South African national team set-up for seven years now in various capacities and has cemented his status as a national hero in that time, guiding the side to back-to-back World Cups.
Given his trophy-laden tenure with the Boks, the 51-year-old has been linked with jobs overseas with rival nations, chiefly England, or, rather, various figures have seen the success he has enjoyed and yearned that he could deliver something similar on foreign shores.
But Erasmus has definitively shut down any hopes other nations might hold that he could join their ranks in the future.
He explained to his podcast hosts that he would not know the “heartbeat” of another country.
Erasmus is just as famous for his ability to get the very best out of his players as he is for his pioneering and at times madcap, innovations to coaching and playing.
But that will remain exclusively for the Springboks.
“No,” Erasmus said when asked if he could coach another nation.
“People forget, this [English] is my second language.
“Sometimes people think just by the tone of my voice or the way I speak.
“I don’t have a vast vocabulary or ways of saying things.
“I’ve got certain words that I can use that I can express something and that’s it. And sometimes it comes out wrong, sometimes it’s just F.
“So, no. And I believe you don’t know the culture of a team, you don’t know their heartbeat, you don’t understand why they are playing, how the fans are.
“I did consider it once and I loved my time at Munster. It was very Bloemfontein-like, where I started, I love those people there.”
Source: @BBCSport
