Thoughts Turn to Pumas

Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus turned his thoughts to the next assignment against Argentina in two weeks’ time after giving the Springboks a pass mark from a 43-0 (halftime 19-0) victory over Wales in a Nations Championship match in Durban on Saturday.

Erasmus said a squad of 26 would be sent to South America while a group of 15 or 16 players remained behind with some coaches to prepare for Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry against New Zealand in August and September.

“To get 43 points and to keep them to nil – we’re satisfied with that,” said Erasmus.

“Forty-three-nil was definitely better than last week – certainly defensively – but it’s easier to defend on a wet field like that – and we had no injuries, so that’s good.

“I think we’ve got a little bit better in every game of the Nations Championship but as we’ve been rotating it does take cohesion away.”

Erasmus said the conditions were deceptively difficult which led to a succession of handling errors: “We saw world-class players make a few knocks-on in this game. The field is really slippery, and you could feel it in the warm-up – that it was really greasy.

“It was tough to play an expansive, pretty game in weather like that against a team that really wanted to defend.

“But we didn’t lose a lineout ball and, while we weren’t on our game in the scrums last week, we were good today – our maul stopping and mauling itself was good. It was something that we wanted to get right so we had a lot of fixes that we got right.

“In this game we leant that our defence was better than last week – we worked really hard on that – and then our set piece was really solid. And I think some guys handled the pressure of test match rugby better than they did last week. I think a lot of guys came through this test with ticks against their name.”

Vusi Moyo – the youngest flyhalf in Springbok history at 20 years and 27 days – came through his baptism of fire as Erasmus continued working on Springbok depth.

“He definitely played well,” said Erasmus.

“You could see there were nerves. He’s a really accurate kicker; kicks off well but you get into a test match like this; with a lot of people in the crowd, the ball is wet and suddenly you don’t kick it into the corners and you don’t get your kick offs on the spot.

“I thought he handled it extremely well. But I’ve been there; in your first or second test you’re tried because of the nerves and I thought his tyres were a little pap (flat) in the second half when we took him off.”

Erasmus said Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu would be ready for the Argentina tour, although Handre Pollard had pulled his hamstring, as the coach looked ahead: “Argentina is going to be tough – like Wales they’ve had our number a few times and our biggest loss was to them since we’ve been together from 2018. We are just trying to build our game and I think today was another step forward.”