Rassie Erasmus’ swipe at England and All Blacks the day his ban ended
One of the most famous bans ever in rugby came to an end yesterday, as South Africa director of rugby Rassie Erasmus is now allowed to take part in match day activities after ten months.
That means the World Cup winning coach is available for the Springboks’ northern hemisphere tour, and in typical Rassie fashion he decided to take a little dig at one of his upcoming opponents on Twitter, England.
Erasmus shared a chart of the teams that have the best win percentage against top ten nations since the 2019 World Cup, and it has the Boks above rivals England and the All Blacks. The world champions have won 11/18 matches (61 percent) while the All Blacks have won 15/25 and England have won 12/20 (both 60 percent). Erasmus takes on Eddie Jones’ side in the final match of the year, and there will undoubtedly be more back and forth between the two before that match at Twickenham.
Before then, South Africa have to face both Ireland and France, who are the two sides with a better win percentage than the Boks. France sit at the top with a record of 16/22 (73 percent) while Ireland’s record is 15/22 (68 percent). Given the fixtures that await the Boks (with a match against Italy in there as well), this table, and the the world rankings, could look very different come December. Erasmus did acknowledge this, and even said “these Tweets don’t age well.”
Take a look at the Tweet:
Lekka!! Nomally these tweets dont age well !! EOYT will certainly provide great banter 🇿🇦 pic.twitter.com/LBwVlAw4lr
— Rassie Erasmus (@RassieRugby) September 29, 2022
South Africa ended their Rugby Championship on Saturday with a win against Argentina, although they did not win by a big enough margin to overtake the All Blacks at the top, with both sides ending with 19 points. Springboks head coach Jacques Nienaber reflected on the Championship after.
“We built some squad depth. Some players got some experience but that wasn’t the main aim – which was to win the Rugby Championship and we fell short on that. But there were some positives to take out of it,” he said.
“We’re not where we want to be yet. As Siya said we need consistency, and we’ll probably get a pretty good idea on our end-of-year tour. We play No 1 and No 2 [France] teams in the world and we have an SA ‘A’ side, and it will be a challenging tour. But it will give us nice answers as to where we are.”
