An hour before kick-off, the front row changed
Rassie Erasmus named a Springboks side last Monday. By Saturday afternoon in Cape Town it barely resembled the one that ran out.
Handre Pollard was injured out on the eve of the game. Cheslin Kolbe was passed fit and took Kurt-Lee Arendse’s shirt. Then, roughly sixty minutes before the anthems, Erasmus swapped his starting front row with the one named on the bench. South Africa won 33-26 and levelled the series at 1-1, the All Blacks having taken the opener 33-16 at Ellis Park.
Sir Steve Hansen watched all of it. He was not impressed.
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“A debacle”, says Hansen
Speaking on the Rugby Unity podcast, the former All Blacks head coach was asked whether anything in Erasmus’ selection for the third Test had surprised him. “No, but you wouldn’t know what he’s going to put on, would you? After last week.”
Pushed on the late changes themselves, he went further. “It’s a debacle I reckon; it’s just a waste of time.”
Part of his objection concerned the people paying to watch. “You’ve got sports betting, and people are having the first try-scorer, and then all of a sudden the team has changed and the guy you backed has been dropped.”
Then came the instruction. “Pick your team, and if you can’t pick your team on Monday, then don’t pick it on Monday. Pick it when you can. Name it when you can; pick it properly.”
McKenzie sees no advantage in any of it
Ewen McKenzie, on the same show, worked through the arithmetic. Either Erasmus never intended to field that first XV and everyone inside the camp knew it, or the switch was real and made because the tour agreement permitted something normal competition rules would not.
“He’s obviously thumbed through the tour agreement and said, ‘Oh, here’s an opportunity for me and I can do something’,” the former Wallabies coach said. “But all it did was put his best front row up against, I think, the best scrummaging front row for New Zealand, so I didn’t see any tactical advantage at all.”
On the reading that it was a masterstroke, McKenzie was blunt. “Yeah, they won the game, but not because of that.”
The sides meet again on Saturday at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, with the series finale to follow in the United States. Erasmus named that team on Monday as well, four changes and a positional switch. Whether it survives to kick-off is a separate question.
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