We have to be much better against France and Ireland – Bok boss Rassie Erasmus

Despite a powerful 66-7 win over Italy to get their Nations Championship end-of-year-tour up and running with a bang, Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus admitted that the team had to be even better if they want to overcome the challenges of France and Ireland.

The Boks next take on France in Saint Denis on Friday night, before moving onto Dublin to battle it out with Ireland, in their final two pool stage matches, followed by them competing in the Finals Weekend at Twickenham in London at the end of the month.

But they will need to produce a stronger performance across the 80 minutes, than they did against Italy, if they want to come out on top against the teams currently ranked third and fourth on the World Rugby rankings log.

Against 11th ranked Italy the Boks raced into a 45-0 lead with six tries in the opening 32 minutes, but over the next 40 minutes they were pegged level 7-7 with the hosts, before two scores in the final eight minutes added some gloss to the scoreline.

“When you go into a game like this and pick a team that’s match fit and ready, everybody is calm, they understand the whole system and when you’ve been coaching them for a while, that’s satisfying,” explained Erasmus about their first game on tour.

“But we know it wasn’t perfect. We have to play much better than this if we want to be competitive against France and Ireland. But it’s nice that after a month away from each other, the boys just got together and slotted in.”

Bok discipline

Erasmus was also pleased with the Boks’ discipline in the match, with them only conceding a few penalties and know cards, and they will hope for more of the same against France, especially after last year’s tour when they picked up red cards against Italy and France, but won both games anyway.

“I think we only conceded one penalty in the first half, and about five penalties and five turnovers in the game, which is pretty disciplined, even though the second half was a little soft,” said Erasmus.

Although the Italy game would have been the perfect opportunity for the Boks to give some of their wider squad a run, Erasmus explained that a combination of getting players to gel ahead of two big games, and getting back to winning ways after losing their last match against the Wallabies Down Under, impacted their selection.

“We’ve never found Italy easy to play against, especially away from home. We wanted to get back on the horse and win. We rolled the dice against Australia, and a lot of guys weren’t in sync, so we wanted to get back to winning ways,” said Erasmus.