Captain30,741 posts
03 Nov 2019, 23:53
#1
03 Nov 2019, 23:53#1
Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus has just won the Rugby World Cup but he is already counting the days to what he considers his next big assignment, which is the series against the British and Irish Lions in 2021.
Erasmus has made it clear over the past week that while the big goal of winning the World Cup as confirmation of the Bok climb from also-rans in the global game to major players again had been an important driver for the team over the past two years, his job does not stop here.
He will find a way to focus a bit more on the director of rugby role he was brought back to South Africa to fulfill by appointing a head coach, probably current defence coach Jacques Nienaber, to take some of the public responsibility away from him.
It probably isn't a coincidence that after spending most of his time with the Boks being shielded from the media, he is now regularly fronting press conferences.
But Erasmus will still be the hands on head of the team, and it is understood he is committed to remain hands on, and on the grass coaching, until 2021.
He says his mission is to take the Boks to a place where they are consistent performers, and not just occasional winners of the World Cup with a lot of dross interspersed in between.
'OUR AIM IS TO BE CONSISTENT'
"When I took over as coach my immediate plan was to win the World Cup, and at that time there were between two years and 18 months, around 618 days, to go until the start of the World Cup," said the highly and understandably satisfied Bok coach.
"There are now 614 days to go until we start our series against the British and Irish Lions. When we land back in South Africa we are going to start our planning for that. If we lose our next test, everyone forgets about the World Cup. We know how it works and we know that South African rugby has been inconsistent and struggled to back up World Cup success by playing well the following year.
"Our aim is to be consistent. There is a Rugby Championship to win next year as well. When Eddie (Jones) first took over at England he went something like 23 wins in his first 24 games. Warren Gatland picked up a lot of consistency for a time with Wales. We need to do that. We need to work towards being consistently successful. We were terrible in 2018. We have been good in 2019. We have our consistency back and we will hopefully get that right going forward."
Erasmus added that after that the focus would switch to the next World Cup to be played in France in 2023. The Springboks have won their three World Cup titles, starting in 1995, in 12 year gaps, but Erasmus said he wanted to break that length of the breaks in that sequence.
Erasmus said the build-up to the World Cup success had been built up on a sequence of smaller battles and simulations that had built the foundation block for the Boks to be ready for the challenge both physically and mentally.
“We had a lot of small targets where we tried to simulate matches, as there was only 18 test matches before the World Cup. We put a lot of emphasis on winning against the All Blacks in Wellington last year as we knew that would be a way to get the confidence of both the players and the public up,” said the Bok coach.
"I decided to treat the All Black game like it was a quarterfinal and decided we should play that role. Then we lost to Australia and Argentina, and I decided that if we don’t win I will resign as coach as I have never lost three games in a row as a coach at any level and thought that if I did not get it right then I did not deserve to be a Springbok coach.
"But we managed to win against New Zealand in New Zealand and that changed the whole mood. It was very important for us not to lose there. Then we drew with them in the next game there a few months ago and that was also an important result for us in terms of building confidence and making people believe in us."
