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Rassie Erasmus shares his view on Warren Gatland's winless run

By PA
Warren Gatland chats to Rassie Erasmus during the 2021 British and Irish Lions tour (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Rassie Erasmus has hailed Warren Gatland as “a great coach” and rugby man “through and through” ahead of what could be the New Zealander’s last game as Wales boss. World champions South Africa are overwhelming favourites to inflict a 12th successive Test match defeat on Wales in Saturday’s Autumn Nations Series clash in Cardiff.

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Speculation continues to rage about Gatland’s future in the job, having overseen just six wins from 23 Tests since returning for a second stint as head coach. It starkly contrasts to first time around when Wales were twice Rugby World Cup semi-finalists, won Six Nations titles and Grand Slams, in addition to briefly becoming the world’s top ranked team.

“It was in Twickenham where we last saw each other last summer,” Springboks head coach Erasmus said. “Coaching can become lonely. It is cut-throat. Whenever someone is under the pump, you don’t wish anything bad on that person.

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“I wouldn’t say I would love him to beat us, but I would love him to be successful. Although we have bumped heads in the past, he is a rugby man through and through. I have got a lot of respect for him and I hope he gets the respect from everyone he deserves.”

Erasmus has overseen two World Cup final triumphs during his stint in charge of the Springboks, but they experienced some difficult results prior to him taking over in 2018, including a 57-0 loss to New Zealand. “We were a new coaching staff that came in. It is easy to start a new culture because it’s almost like a new start,” he added.

Team Form

Last 5 Games

1
Wins
4
3
Streak
4
17
Tries Scored
25
-77
Points Difference
99
2/5
First Try
4/5
2/5
First Points
4/5
2/5
Race To 10 Points
4/5

“Wales are in a totally different scenario. I know the record of losing 11 on the trot is obviously not great, and I take ourselves back, just before I took over, and we lost 57-0 in New Zealand. The next weekend we lost to the same team (in Cape Town) by two points. I just know Warren is a great coach and I know they have got great players.

“Sometimes you just turn it around because players believe in a coach, sometimes you just say a right word and the players say they are going to do it for the coach and the country. A lot can change in rugby with a change in confidence and mindset, and Australia is a perfect example of how things can change in the sport if one considers how well they are playing now compared to last year.

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“They [Wales] are a team with everything to gain and nothing to lose, so it would be careless of us to think that we just need to pitch up and the result will go in our favour.”

Erasmus has made seven changes from the team that beat England, including starts for the Hendrikse brothers Jaden and Jordan as half-backs. The other five switches are up front, with hooker Johan Grobbelaar, prop Thomas du Toit, locks Jean Kleyn and Franco Mostert and flanker Elrigh Louw all featuring.

A powerful bench includes six forwards, with Eben Etzebeth, Vincent Koch, RG Snyman being among them, in addition to uncapped flanker Cameron Hanekom. Hanekom, whose grandmother is Welsh, had previously been linked to a possible Test career with Wales.

He said: “It never crossed my mind, honestly. It was more the media that speculated it. Since I was a young boy I have always dreamed of playing for the Springboks.”

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Watch the highly acclaimed five-part documentary Chasing the Sun 2, chronicling the journey of the Springboks as they strive to successfully defend the Rugby World Cup, free on RugbyPass TV (*unavailable in Africa)

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AllyOz 19 hours ago
Does the next Wallabies coach have to be an Australian?

I will preface this comment by saying that I hope Joe Schmidt continues for as long as he can as I think he has done a tremendous job to date. He has, in some ways, made the job a little harder for himself by initially relying on domestic based players and never really going over the top with OS based players even when he relaxed his policy a little more. I really enjoy how the team are playing at the moment.


I think Les Kiss, because (1) he has a bit more international experience, (2) has previously coached with Schmidt and in the same setup as Schmidt, might provide the smoothest transition, though I am not sure that this necessarily needs to be the case.


I would say one thing though about OS versus local coaches. I have a preference for local coaches but not for the reason that people might suppose (certainly not for the reason OJohn will have opined - I haven't read all the way down but I think I can guess it).


Australia has produced coaches of international standing who have won World Cups and major trophies. Bob Dwyer, Rod Macqueen, Alan Jones, Michael Cheika and Eddie Jones. I would add John Connolly - though he never got the international success he was highly successful with Queensland against quality NZ opposition and I think you could argue, never really got the run at international level that others did (OJohn might agree with that bit). Some of those are controversial but they all achieved high level results. You can add to that a number of assistants who worked OS at a high level.


But what the lack of a clear Australian coach suggests to me is that we are no longer producing coaches of international quality through our systems. We have had some overseas based coaches in our system like Thorn and Wessels and Cron (though I would suggest Thorn was a unique case who played for Australia in one code and NZ in the other and saw himself as a both a NZer and a Queenslander having arrived here at around age 12). Cron was developed in the Australian system anyway, so I don't have a problem with where he was born.


But my point is that we used to have systems in Australia that produced world class coaches. The systems developed by Dick Marks, which adopted and adapted some of the best coaching training approaches at the time from around the world (Wales particularly) but focussed on training Australian coaches with the best available methods, in my mind (as someone who grew up and began coaching late in that era) was a key part of what produced the highly skilled players that we produced at the time and also that produced those world class coaches. I think it was slipping already by the time I did my Level II certificate in 2002 and I think Eddie Jones influence and the priorities of the executive, particularly John O'Neill, might have been the beginning of the end. But if we have good coaching development programmes at school and junior level that will feed through to representative level then we will have


I think this is the missing ingredient that both ourselves and, ironically, Wales (who gave us the bones of our coaching system that became world leading), is a poor coaching development system. Fix that and you start getting players developing basic skills better and earlier in their careers and this feeds through all the way through the system and it also means that, when coaching positions at all levels come up, there are people of quality to fill them, who feed through the system all the way to the top. We could be exporting more coaches to Japan and England and France and the UK and the USA, as we have done a bit in the past.


A lack of a third tier between SR and Club rugby might block this a little - but I am not sure that this alone is the reason - it does give people some opportunity though to be noticed and play a key role in developing that next generation of players coming through. And we have never been able to make the cost sustainable.


I don't think it matters that we have an OS coach as our head coach at the moment but I think it does tell us something about overall rugby ecosystem that, when a coaching appointment comes up, we don't have 3 or 4 high quality options ready to take over. The failure of our coaching development pathway is a key missing ingredient for me and one of the reasons our systems are failing.

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