Rassie: How Boks won the refs over

INTERVIEW: South Africa's Director of Rugby Rassie Erasmus has gone from being the varmint of World Rugby and being seen as an antagonist of referees, to being appreciated for his great relationship with match officials.

It all changed, dramatically, after the Springboks' loss (26-30) to France in Marseille last year.

Erasmus admitted that he made a purposeful decision to not only change his own approach, but also transform the team's game plan to make it easier for referees to see the 'good' side of the Boks.

The metamorphosis was preceded by a period of turmoil between Erasmus and match officials - which included a year-long ban slapped on him by World Rugby.

The transformation has gone a full circle, to where the Springboks seemed to be on the right side of some 50-50 calls and the French ended up whining about the rulings of New Zealand referee Ben O’Keeffe.

French captain Antoine Dupont went as far as accusing the Kiwi match official of a sub-standard performance in their one-point (28-29) quarterfinal loss to South Africa in Paris this past Sunday – a result that knocked the tournament hosts out of the global showpiece.

The SARU boss, Erasmus, openly spoke on Monday about how he moulded South Africa's change of style to get the team on the right side of referees.

"To be honest, and I am serious when I say this, I will never forget that [social media] post after that last French game [in November 2022]," Erasmus said at the start of the build-up to the World Cup semifinal encounter with England in Paris on Saturday.

"I tweeted a few tweets and a lot of people said it was controversial.

"However, I can remember my caption there was: 'We will have to adapt and make things clearer for referees, we can't just rely on mauling, scrumming and close-contact work where it is very difficult for the referee to make the correct decision. Because it's very dynamic and it's busy and there's a little bit of grey areas there'.

"So, we had to adapt.

"Also, we wanted to try and score tries through a more open, fluent, running game.

"And you could see in our try-scoring tally, there's a lot scored by our backs -certainly more than our forwards."

Erasmus reiterated that they needed to change tact to ensure those 50-50 calls started going the way of the Boks.

(The article continues below the extended highlights package ...)

"If you only rely on a certain aspect of the game, which is very tough for the referee to referee, and he gets two [decisions] wrong, but you only relying on those three or four of five opportunities that you get, 50 percent of your opportunities are gone.

"But if you fire shots in open play, general play from the top of line-outs or counter-attack, it's clearer decisions for the referee and easier to make.

"As a team we don't want to be this wonderful playing rugby team that the whole world loves, but we do want to score tries."

Erasmus also said they deliberately changed their approach to match officials, so that South Africa is no longer seen as the vermin of the game.

He also revealed that he had again had a chat with former referee Nigel Owens, post Sunday's win against France to ensure they stay of the right side of match officials.

"As you know, we have changed our whole approach," Erasmus told a media briefing.

"I think I've mentioned it.

" Actually this morning [Monday] we chatted to [former referee] Nigel Owens again.

"We conceded six penalties.

"Since we've changed our way, no matter if we are correct and the referees are wrong, respect must always be shown.

"Our whole motto has been let's respect the referees.

"It works both ways.

"He's going to make mistakes, we're going to make mistakes.

"And the frustration we had in the past, and the lack of communication because of various things with Covid.

"That is in all the past.

"There's a nice protocol in place, it's easy to communicate to them."

He played down the French whining in the wake of their quarterfinal loss.

"I wouldn't like to comment on what they [France] said about the referee [in the quarter-final].

"We are just working on accepting that there will be mistakes on both sides, which is something that we had to get right and we had to earn the respect back and I think it's slowly happening."

@king365ed

@rugby365com

* Picture credit: @rugbyworldcup