Rassie’s salty video majorly backfires and could sabotage Boks’ tour
Oh it’s good having Rassie Erasmus back. No sooner was the Boks’ director of rugby back from his lengthy matchday ban than he was putting his foot in it.
He has not quite managed to produce a sequel as good as his original Lions tour epic in 2021, but Erasmus has continued to churn videos out from his studio of bitterness. His latest blockbuster was released on Twitter the day after South Africa’s loss to Ireland on Saturday, and was full of his trademark saltiness. He wrote:
“Tough test match, thanks for all the support from South Africa, also thanks to the Ireland supporters at the Aviva, you definitely understand the game and its great to play in an atmosphere like yesterday! Surely was a game of big battles, but small margins.”
The caption seems cheery and magnanimous until you remember who we a dealing with here. Rassie Erasmus does not do cheery and magnanimous, rather bitter and sarcastic. When seeing the video shared in the post, it becomes abundantly clear that the “small margins” he wrote of was just a thinly veiled dig at the officiating.
The video was of Mack Hansen’s try, which was scored from a turnover. Now there are plenty of angles Rassie could have been going for here. The obvious one, which basically every Bok fan on Earth has commented on already, was Andrew Porter’s forward pass in the build up to the try, and also maybe Jimmy O’Brien’s forward in the same phase. It could also be highlighting how the ball was turned over via the boot of Ireland hooker Dan Sheehan in the ruck. Sheehan kicked the ball out of the ruck, something the Boks were penalised for late in the match as they were chasing the win.
However, the main response to this video is that Rassie has accidentally highlighted a piece of foul play from his own player. Yes, Sheehan did kick the ball away, but while he was doing so Siya Kolisi was attempting to rip his head off. The Bok captain clearly grabbed the Irishman by the neck/head and was attempting a gruesome neck roll, which probably should have resulted in a penalty to Ireland anyway. Worse still, Rassie might actually have raised an incident that could be cited.
Then again, Rassie is such a champion for fair refereeing that he is maybe wanting his own captain to be banned for the rest of the Boks’ tour all for the sake of fairness.
This is the post:
Tough test match, thanks for all the support from 🇿🇦, also thanks to the Ireland supporters at the Aviva, you definetly understand the game and its great to play in an atmosphere like yesterday ! Surely was a game of big battles,but small margins 👇🏿 pic.twitter.com/Jcjci2Jlvo
— Rassie Erasmus (@RassieRugby) November 6, 2022
