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Rassie Erasmus made a late call to swap his starting and reserve front rows before confirming his squad list for the Springboks clash against France in Paris on Friday night, citing indecision in his post-match explanation.
A late substitution brought Gerhard Steenekamp, Jan-Hendrik Wessels and Thomas du Toit into the starting XV after the trio were initially named on the bench for the Test. That front row would eventually be replaced before half-time by the men originally backed to start: Ox Nche, Malcolm Marx and Wilco Louw.
With the final score 21-19 in favor of the French, it was clear that the late change did not quite have the desired effect for Erasmus, although the Springbok scrum led to a string of penalties for his Test side.
Erasmus simply put the late change down to indecision.
“We announced our team on Monday, but then we thought we might have to change something,” he said at the press conference after the match. “We waited until the captain on Thursday to decide, and even then we weren’t sure if we would, but we decided shortly before the game, mainly by testing that combination with Rugby World Cup next year in mind.”
This is not the first time that Erasmus changed the script moments before the start of the game, the last time he did it against All black people in Cape Town. His reasoning then was due to the conditions, wanting to get his lighter front row into the game while the conditions were dry.
The front row accounted for 10 of France’s 14 penalties conceded in the match, with substitute Regis Montagne guilty of conceding four penalties and ultimately paying the price for them by spending 10 minutes in the sin bin.
The Springboks scored two tries from a lineout drive, one to Wessels and one to Marx, but ultimately failed to turn the set-piece pressure they created into enough points to win.
“France played very well and we didn’t, so I can’t make many excuses. They took their chances when they got them and we didn’t,” Erasmus added.
“It’s probably a cliché but I definitely think we had enough chances and there were simple tries we could have scored with the last pass and maybe one or two wrong decisions, like not kicking for a corner and expecting the referee to give four penalties in a row.
“In front of this kind of crowd, you might feel that you have dominance, but it’s human not to punish the home team if they already have a booking or two. But in the end it comes down to the fact that they played well and we didn’t.”