The Springboks are on a charm offensive. The reigning back-to-back world champions have arrived in the UK for autumn matches with Scotland, England and Wales, they believe they are hated by a significant proportion of the rugby public here, and they are desperate to at least make a better effort to be understood.
Adapting the old Millwall football song into “no one likes us and we do care” would be apt for the new approach by the men in green jerseys.
The reasoning is laid out by Rassie Erasmus, as South Africa’s head coach and all-round tone-setting totem, as he meets i and other representatives of the UK rugby press at the Springboks’ training camp in Jersey: “We never get the opportunity to interact with you guys.
“Not in a personal, vibey, friendly way, but in a way that’s different from always before a match [a commentary of] what is the grudge for this game, is there revenge – he said this, they said that.
“Not that you should [automatically] judge that as positive, but just to really understand why we value certain things like a scrum, why we sometimes stand up against things for what we think is the right way.”
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Part of this approach is for commercial reasons. South Africa have long seen their historical nemesis, the New Zealand All Blacks, coining it in with a global identity. The Boks by contrast have MTN on the front of their jerseys and FNB on the back – a South African telecoms company and bank, respectively.
Erasmus also thinks South Africa’s players are seen in the wrong light: “You don’t want to make other people unhappy. You don’t want people not to like you. You don’t want people to think you are stubborn [or] arrogant.
“Especially if you know the characters in the team… they don’t even know why it is. For years, we are [seen as] bullies who don’t really care what people think. But we do. I hope the world sees me trying to change, the way we are playing at least.”
This writer argued early in last year’s World Cup that the Boks should be lauded for their challenging of convention: the 7-1 split on the bench, the mark in the 22 taken as a scrum, the trick plays in huge knockout matches, even the traffic lights in the coaches’ box.
But Erasmus’s foul treatment of referees during the 2021 Lions series was an exception. And after a ban from World Rugby, he was at it again with tweets against the refereeing of Wayne Barnes in 2022, and further questionable posts during the World Cup, although Erasmus is adamant these were messages to South Africa’s own fans that the team needed to change.
In 2024, they have followed through with a more open style, partly due to ex-All Black fly-half Tony Brown joining the coaching staff on attack. They won the Rugby Championship after drawing an enthralling home series with Ireland, who are currently ranked just above the Boks as No 1 in the world.
Erasmus says the language barrier does not help. “People forget we speak in our second language. There’s very few guys that are just English, it’s Xhosa and Zulu and Sotho and Afrikaans.”
But if they are keen to be loved, what about the scenes in the documentary series Chasing the Sun in which the Boks spark off others, such as “clever, clever” Ireland – Erasmus implores hooker Bongi Mbonambi: “Don’t smile at these f**kers.”
Now Erasmus says: “A rugby match will always be personal for us, because we are representing South Africa; it is our job to protect South Africa in that sense. Sometimes we will go and find something that somebody said. It might be five years old, but that hurt comes back. [But] I don’t want this to sound like we want to make every side the enemy. That is what we are actually trying not to do.”
Nor is this about being given a “tap on the shoulder” as the best: “We have never said we are No 1 in the world.” And he insists his squad has suffered from divisions. “We just don’t always show that in the nice documentaries! If you’re brutally honest then you lose a few guys and they say ‘oh, f**k you! If you think that way then I don’t want to be part of that’. They’ve told me many times ‘that is the shittest plan you’ve ever had.’”
Something beyond debate is how Erasmus’s love of rugby sizzles and crackles, even here in a peaceful Jersey hotel. It is easy to see why top players want to play for him. It is time to move rooms and meet them, with Erasmus advising: “I don’t want you to suck up a little bit, because they won’t like that.”
Over there sit Handre Pollard and Eben Etzebeth and Malcolm Marx; here are Ox Nche and Cheslin Kolbe and Pieter-Steph du Toit. To encounter the Boks en masse is to be with at least a dozen world stars, given their 2019 and 2023 achievements.
They are emphatically not addressing contentious issues such as England flanker Tom Curry’s accusation of racism against Mbonambi in the World Cup, or captain Siya Kolisi’s recent divorce. What they do, to a man, is preach diversity and inclusion and inspiration.
Nche recalls the post 2023 World Cup trophy tour, and a visit to his home town of Thaba Nchu. “I can’t even explain it,” he tells i. “An experience out of this world, to see how many kids I have inspired, and thinking when I was younger, I never got a chance to see someone that I’ve seen on TV in real life, all up close like that. I cherished every single moment.”
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Kolisi says of Erasmus: “I’ve never met anyone that thinks the way he thinks about the game. And also how he’s hard on us, but he’s also loving and caring, because he’s played the game and he wants us to learn from his mistakes.
“He’s trying to use rugby to change not just ourselves, our lives, [but also] the way of things in South Africa, to show that we might all come from different backgrounds, we might all come from different races, we might all have diversity in everything that we are, but if we all focus on one plan and we make sure everybody sticks to what the team wants to do, all our individual goals and dreams will come true.”
It is near impossible for an outsider to judge the veracity of all this. On the rugby, Nche says this: “Our management always say they pick ‘the right guys’; there’s no egos. If a guy who just came in has a suggestion that we can do better, everyone listens. If you have a hundred caps or one cap, you are valued. That’s how we stay hungry.”
Marx tells i: “Speaking from my own heart, literally, it’s an honour and a privilege to be in this group, let alone play. It’s been my dream since I was a kid. I want my kids to look back one day, and see a YouTube clip, and say ‘that was my dad’.”
As for Erasmus, he says he will never coach another international team, much as some pundits would like to see him give England an injection of his enthusiasm. He acknowledges the challenge of having sat in “2,000” Springbok team meetings since he took charge in 2018, and his answer is: “Will this 2,001 help? Or should I shut my mouth?”
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