Rassie Erasmus reveals the surprising inspiration behind the Springboks’ remarkable tactics during Italy win
Rassie Erasmus has revealed the inspiration for the Springboks’ unique maul set-up which led to a couple of tries in their dominant victory over Italy.
South Africa hammered the Azzurri 45-0 on Saturday which secured a 2-0 series victory, with much of the discussion afterwards about the hosts’ innovative tactics.
One of their successful ploys saw them set up a maul in phase play by getting the scrum-half to throw the ball to a player that is being lifted in the air by his team-mates.
A lineout in open play
It resembled a lineout but in open field and enabled the Boks to gain a stable platform to use one of their most lethal weapons.
They managed to create enough havoc to touch down twice from it and Erasmus revealed that their idea came from an unlikely source.
“We noticed it with Paul Roos U14s,” he said. “You just get all the benefits from what you get in the lineout you actually get if you support in general play.”
Erasmus was not sure whether it might become a regular feature of their game, however, suggesting that teams will now try and find ways to stop it.
“It worked for us, but obviously now people will be alert for that. I think we won’t be able to do it for a few games,” he added.
That maul set-up was not the only unique move the Springboks decided to try as straight from the kick-off, they were purposefully caught offside with the ball not going 10 metres.
Although it resulted in an Italy scrum on halfway, the Boks dominated that area last week and were confident of winning a penalty.
However, that tactic did not yield any success, with the visitors being awarded a free-kick following an infringement from the hosts.
Nche’s impact
In fact, the set-piece was not too much of a factor in the game until Erasmus decided to bring Ox Nche on at loosehead.
He replaced Thomas du Toit in the front-row following a red card for number eight Jasper Wiese and Erasmus was asked about that tactical switch.
Thomas is a guy that can play both sides, loosehead and tighthead, but sometimes Thomas is a better tighthead than loosehead and then sometimes he does better on the loosehead side,” he said.
We used him on the loosehead side but, when we were down to 14 men, when we got a permanent red card, in our opinion we needed someone that is a full blown loosehead that can handle the pressure of eight guys scrummaging against seven.
“We felt Ox was better equipped for that. It was just purely seven men against eight men so one of the props was going to suffer a little bit more… and Ox is just the more experienced loosehead, so we felt we needed him.”
