Rassie's Boks will beat Eddie's England

I KNOW RASSIE IS A GREAT COACH BUT THIS IS A BIG CALL BY KEO GIVEN HOW DISMAL THE BOKS WERE UNDER COETZEE. IT WOULD BE A HUGE TURN AROUND IN A DOUBLE QUICK TIME. IF IT HAPPENS DR MOZZZZ WOULD BE EATING CROW!

Rassie Erasmus’s Springboks will beat Eddie Jones’s England in the June three-Test series.

And that series victory will be the springboard to the Springboks’ rejuvenation in 2018.

England, who have lost only once since Jones took over after the 2015 Rugby World Cup disaster of not making it out of the Group stages, are currently ranked second behind only the All Blacks.

Jones’s England, though, have yet to play the All Blacks and will meet the world champions for the first time (in the Jones era) at Twickenham in November.

Jones’s England have also played South Africa just once, and that was also at Twickenham.

England, in their history, have won just three Tests in South Africa, and for all the winning habit and success against Australia (five successive wins) and dominance of the Six Nations, they’re a side to be respected and not feared. (THE BOKS OF TODAY ARE NOT THE BOKS OF OLD. CAN RASSIE CHANGE THAT IN SO SHORT A TIME AND GIVEN ALL THE MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES)

Had Jones played the All Blacks home and away at least four times in the last two years and been unbeaten then I’d be viewing England in a very different light. As it is, the biggest game Jones’s England have played, against Ireland in Dublin last year, was also the only time England have lost with Jones in charge.

Ireland, for me, are the best team outside of the All Blacks - and that win in Dublin (against England) added substance to this view.

Jones has worked miracles with England since the embarrassment of what happened to the squad at the 2015 Rugby World Cup. He has added a winning habit and mental resolve to the undoubted talents of so many players who were part of the 2015 debacle under Stuart Lancaster.

But a track record built over a period of time that doesn’t involve combat against the All Blacks will always be questionable, and I believe the Junes series will expose the soft underbelly of a win record that doesn’t include the All Blacks.

I would have never backed a series win against England had Allister Coetzee still been the coach because I don’t think he was equipped technically to outsmart Jones. I believe Rassie Erasmus can do a job on Jones.(KEO OBVIOUSLY REALIZES AS DO MOST RUGBY MEN THAT RASSIE IS A RUGBY GENIUS)

A year ago I wrote on Sport24 that Coetzee’s Springboks would whip France three nil. I didn’t need hindsight to call that, as it had as much to do with the awful state of the French national team, who currently are ranked No 10 in the world.

The Boks duly delivered and I praised Coetzee for overseeing the victory.

His bigger Tests, I wrote at the time, were Albany (against the All Blacks) and Dublin (against the Irish). He failed them dismally, suffering 57-0 and 38-3 defeats.

That’s why he is no longer the Bok coach; not because of a plot to get rid of him because of his race or culture. Coetzee is gone because of a 44% win record and too many record defeats. Coetzee also never succeeded in a Test against a team ranked higher (at the time) than his Springboks.

If Coetzee had won 65 percent of his Test matches and not suffered those cringe-type record defeats he would still be the coach and Erasmus, as national director of rugby, would have added to the strength of whatever Coetzee was doing.

But he didn’t get a 65% win record and Erasmus now has 18 Tests and 600-odd days to prepare the Springboks for a World Cup. His focus will be on arriving at the World Cup with a winning Springboks habit and some big conquests, like knocking over England in a series in South Africa.

Once at the World Cup it becomes a tenure in a tournament.

There is enough time and there is enough player capacity, in South Africa and abroad.

There is also more than enough time to prepare.

There is no need to feel panic or apprehension.

There is clarity within the Springbok set-up because Erasmus’s role has been clearly defined. He is responsible for the performance of the South African national teams at all levels, including the Springboks.

He just will be hands on for the next 18 months when it comes to the sport’s flagship team.

I don’t see Erasmus as the savior of Springbok rugby or as the Messiah. No such thing exists, but I do see him as a better tactician, technical coach and selector than Coetzee, and it’s the selections that will prove decisive in the change of Springbok fortunes in 2018.

Erasmus’s nationald of rugby portfolio will in the course of next week be confirmed as including heading up the Springboks for the next 18 Test matches.

A decision on whether Erasmus will continue to double up as national director of rugby and head coach, as he did with Munster for two seasons, will only be taken after the 2019 Rugby World Cup.

In the interim, Erasmus has been doing what every successful national director of rugby would be doing - and that is nurturing healthy relationships with the four Super Rugby and two PRO14 head coaches. He has been spending time with each of the regions, without imposing his own will on the interaction.

He has been vocal that it is a two-way relationship. It’s what he and his rugby department can do for each region as much as what they can do in terms of ensuring a better prepared player is available for June’s Springbok Test series.

There is calm on the rugby front, even if the manner of Coetzee’s dismissal would suggest chaos.

Jones will be more restless than he was a month ago and for good reason because June will be a month of jubilation for the Springboks.

Erasmus and the regional franchise head coaches will combine in the next three months to deliver a Springbok squad that will win the series.

I DO EXPECT BOKS TO IMPROVE. TIME TO WHIP THOSE HAPLESS KIWI PRETENDERS!

Lima Sopoaga’s departure to Wasps at the conclusion of this year’s Super Rugby season is another example that the overseas player drain is not exclusive to South African rugby.

New Zealand manages the consequence of the player exodus better than the rest because of the national coaching structures and also the quality of those coaches.

Ireland’s very successful Kiwi coach Joe Schmidt was schooled in the New Zealand professional structures. He transferred that thinking to Ireland and implemented very similar structures and also forged a very strong working relationship with the four provinces.

It’s Ireland first now in Ireland and the four provinces place a premium on Schmidt’s input. The provinces have also aligned with Schmidt’s thinking when it comes to managing players who are nationally contracted, in terms of their game time and there is a two-way stream of communication.

Rassie Erasmus, as Director of Rugby for Munster, worked closely with Schmidt for the last two years and he experienced first hand the benefits of the Irish system, both for country and for province.

He knows this working system thinking can be transferred to South Africa’s four Super Rugby franchises and also the two PRO14 franchises. There are adaptations because South Africa is not Ireland; nor is it New Zealand.

The rugby coaching and management principles applied by Schmidt and All Blacks coach Steve Hansen are consistent with Erasmus’s and primary to those principles is that those involved with the national set-up from within the coaching and analytical structures work all-year round. Their roles are not restricted to the international season that starts mid-year. Their role is also not exclusive to working with the selected Springbok squad at camps and also during the international season.

Erasmus and those in the national coaching structure will be a presence all-year round on the South African professional rugby scene. Erasmus wants to get an understanding and appreciation of how each of the four Super Rugby and two PRO14 franchises function. He wants to contribute where needed or wanted and he wants to learn as much as he believes he can teach.

He coached the Cheetahs in the Currie Cup and also headed up the Stormers Super Rugby challenge. He had a stint at the Cats in Super Rugby early in his coaching career.

His journey as a coach has been longer than most think because he finished playing professionally before he turned 30 and he was a head coach of a professional team as a 30-year-old. He is now 45 and while many still think of him as a relatively recent Springbok, the reality is that Erasmus’s professional coaching career has been longer than his professional playing career.

He certainly has done his apprenticeship, from Johannesburg, to Bloemfontein, to Cape Town within the South African professional structures, and most recently in Ireland as Munster’s head of rugby.

Erasmus accepts the realities of drain on player resources because of the lucrative lure to players of going to Europe, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Japan. It is never going to change and the increasing strength of the Euro and Pound in relation to the rand means it is delusional to think there will be a decrease in player departures.

What has hurt South African rugby the most is how the player drain has weakened the Super Rugby franchises. The Test team should be able to survive, as New Zealand has shown in refusing to select overseas-based players for the All Blacks. 

The underbelly of the All Blacks, the Super Rugby franchises, have been vulnerable at times over the last decade but excellent coaching and player identification has ensured that New Zealand has still continued its dominance of the competition despite losing close to 150 players, which if you do the math translates to five Super Rugby squads (DIDNT WE LOSE 300 PLUS PLAYERS OVERSEAS?)

New Zealand, in the time of losing those players, have continued to win the title and all five franchises have won Super Rugby at least once. 

Erasmus believes that there has to be greater alignment with his national set up and the six main professional coaches in the country. There needs to be a vision around how best to improve South African rugby as a collective and this doesn’t mean every team playing a similar pattern or being a clone of the other.

The collective he talks about is intellectually, where coaches brainstorm and strategise together and where the four Super Rugby and two PRO14 coaches actively and operationally are a part of that bigger South African picture.

He doesn’t see it as a justification that because South Africa loses players to overseas clubs then the natural knock on effect is South African teams must be expected to lose.

New Zealand has 31 All Blacks among the 147 players overseas and they have lost 12 of their last 52 capped Test players. There are also 15 others who left who now play for other countries internationally. But their domestic product remains strong.

South Africa’s domestic game, according to Erasmus, can also be strong but it has to be a collective, in which he wears those franchise caps as much as he wants the franchise coaches to wear the national cap.

The South African Rugby Union offices reopen on January 15, but Erasmus and those coaches already contracted to his new national structure (Jacques Nienaber and Pieter de Villiers) started working on January 3. They’ve already started engaging and interacting with the franchises, in some instances purely as observers.

Erasmus appreciates, having been that franchise coach, that no one knows the player better than the franchise coach, who spends most of the year with the player. He also knows that a national squad is only as strong as the competition structure and franchise environment from which those players are chosen.

If he can contribute to a making the franchise environment stronger from a rugby intellectual position, then those six franchise coaches will naturally make his national environment stronger.

It’s a win-win situation and while most of the media attention this week has been on where England coach Eddie Jones has been spotted visiting South Africa’s franchises in preparation for England’s three Test series later this year, the most significant visits have been the ones by Erasmus and his team.

They’ve been on the road from January 8 and will be for most of the next six months as Erasmus actively works an on-field player blueprint that finally speaks to the collective of South African rugby