England will be no pushovers, says South Africa’s director of rugby Rassie Erasmus

PARIS – South Africa are not taken in by the outside noise about England being a bad team and the statistics suggest Saturday’s Rugby World Cup semi-final will be tight.

Springboks’ director of rugby Rassie Erasmus, who coached them to 2019 World Cup glory with a 32-12 thumping of England in the final, added that unlike them, England had won all their matches thus far.

The English, though, have had the easier run of opponents and generally not raised the roof with their performances.

Erasmus and coach Jacques Nienaber’s side have, on the other hand, emerged from a tougher pool, albeit having lost 13-8 to Ireland, whom they replaced as world No. 1 on Monday.

Their remarkable 29-28 victory over hosts and title favourites France in Sunday’s thrilling quarter-final makes the Springboks firm favourites to reach the final.

“If we think England is bad because people from outside say that they are not doing well... our reality is the truth, not the reality that people create outside our camp,” said Erasmus, 50, on Monday.

“We know from the (English) Premiership, a lot of our players play against them and we know (Steve) Borthwick is an excellent coach, which he showed at Leicester and as a captain and a player for England.

“It will be a very tough test against a team that hasn’t lost a game and more or less conceded the same amount of tries and racked up the same amount of points.

“You can know how close this game (will be) – if you just look at stats, and I know stats don’t always tell the whole picture.”

Erasmus said he had been taken aback by how open all the four quarter-finals were, but believes the semi-finals will see a return to more traditional, hard-fought rugby.

“I was surprised how in the quarter-finals there were so many tries scored,” said Erasmus. “That was something different.

“But I guess when we go into semi-finals, again defence, scrum, mauls, tactical kicking.

“As it gets closer to that final and, hopefully we are in that final, if we get past England, those deep, mechanical fundamentals of the game will always start getting more and more important.”

Erasmus has been much more restrained on social media at this tournament and has not criticised referees, something which earned him two bans in the past.

The first was a year-long ban in 2021 and then, having just returned from that suspension, he was banned again in November 2022 for criticising the refereeing in the Springboks’ ferocious Test match with the French, which they lost 30-26.

Erasmus, though, defended himself on Monday, saying it was more a wake-up call to his team.

He said: “I posted a few tweets at that time that a lot of people said was controversial, but I was being serious. You can’t just rely on mauling, scrumming and close contact work where it’s very difficult for the referee to make the correct decision, because it’s dynamic and busy and there are many grey areas.”

“We had to adapt,” Erasmus added. “To try and score tries through more open, fluent, running rugby. You can see in our try-scoring tally, there’s a lot scored by our backs, more than our forwards.

“If you only rely on a certain aspect of the game, which is very tough for the referee to referee and he gets two (decisions) wrong, but you are only relying on those three or four or five opportunities that you get, 50 per cent of your opportunities are gone.

“But if you fire shots in open play, general play from the top of line-outs or counter-attacks, it’s clearer decisions for the referee and easier to make. I really think people did interpret my tweets wrongly. I was frustrated but also really serious.

“As a team, we don’t want to be this wonderful playing rugby team that the whole world loves, but we do want to score tries.” AFP, REUTERS