Erasmus says tactical mistake on his part behind England's early scores

Springbok head coach Rassie Erasmus says the wrong tactics was the cause for his team’s horror show in the opening quarter against England at Ellis Park on Saturday – reports Rugby 365.

England raced into a 24-3 lead after 18 minutes before the Springboks staged an inspiring fightback led by Premiership stars Francois de Klerk and fullback Willie le Roux. The Boks eventually won 42-39.

Erasmus said he expected England to kick more, and they were a bit surprised when the visitors attacked the wide channels with relative ease.

“It was a tactical mistake on my part, but as soon as we realised we needed more width on defence, and the players adapted on the field, things started going our way,” said Erasmus, who admitted that it will take to build strong combinations going forward.

“When you have such a big number of players with very few Test caps, a lot of work will have to be done,” he added.

“If we had lost, it would’ve created doubt, but it will be a bit easier now to get consistency in selection. Still, we will have to try a few things next week and we will have to make big calls going forward, which probably means we’ll lose some matches, but we have to get players exposed to Test rugby and see if they have what it takes to make it at this level.

“Our replacements all went to the USA last week and I expected them to run out of steam a bit after some time, but all of them made a big impact.

“There were some great individual performances, but we still made too many unnecessary errors and we have a lot to work on. Looking back, we probably got out of jail free today [Saturday], but just as they could have put us away, we could have put them away.

“Next week’s Test in Bloemfontein will be massive.”

Erasmus praised the senior players for helping the Boks get back on track.

“It certainly wasn’t the start we wanted in our first Test at home and I was worried because we had a lot of young players against a very experienced England side,” said Erasmus.

“It certainly could’ve gone from bad to worse, but credit to Siya [Kolisi], Duane [Vermeulen], Beast [Mtawarira] and Handre [Pollard], our senior players, for getting us back on track. Still, we only scraped through in the end and we made too many errors, so there is a lot for us to work on.

“When we managed to keep the ball, England were under the same stress we were early in the game. I’m proud of the guys – they showed character and it’s something we can take forward.”