We all felt Rassie Erasmus’ ‘Really’ meme and tweet yesterday about World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont’s views on the Springbok Bomb Squad was actually quite appropriate.
“Bomb squad... Good thing games is won or lost on the field and not in the boardrooms”, the Bok coach stated early yesterday morning after Beaumont vented his misgivings about allowing substitutes in rugby.
💣squad 🤷🏼♂️ Good thing games is won or lost on the field and not in the boardrooms 🇿🇦 pic.twitter.com/BWL3gtJ8wp
— Johan Erasmus (@RassieRugby) October 15, 2024
The irony is that SA Rugby lost the hosting rights to last year’s World Cup in a boardroom. With South Africa having already been chosen as the preferred candidate, the final step was a vote and suddenly France emerged as the victors – but the Boks won the title “on the field”.
“My view is that we allow too many substitutes,” Beaumont said in an interview with The Times of London ahead of his departure from the position in November after two terms.
“I don’t know if I’m looking through rose-coloured spectacles, but in years gone by, the game always opened up in the last 20 minutes, and games were often won in the last 20 minutes.
“The Bomb Squad are very effective at what they do, and very successful – they have won two World Cups. I will not criticise that at all, because it suits their game, but maybe they could run for a bit longer and a bit further.”
But it’s the self-same World Rugby who implemented the current laws that allows for eight substitutes to be made at any time.
The Springboks – and Erasmus in particular – came up with the match-winning strategy of bringing four or five tight forwards onto the pitch early in the second half to make a major impact.
It's been a year since Damian Willemse called for the scrum against France in the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals 🤜🤛 pic.twitter.com/JCv3uKIrEb
— SuperSport Rugby (@SSRugby) October 15, 2024
All other teams had the right to devise such a plan too, but didn’t. So now, because the Boks have two World Cups in a row, often with the help of the Bomb Squad, it is suddenly a problem?
Make no mistake, South African rugby fans, especially on social media, can be a rowdy bunch and may sometimes get carried away with any criticism or offence that comes the Boks’ away.
But it is hard to refute the view that many law changes or trials and the like seem increasingly to be a ploy to “get at the Springboks”.
Yes, of course Erasmus and his management will try to come up with plans to work around the latest law amendments that will be implemented from January next year, but again, some of those already in place just smacks of anti-SA bias.
Damian Willemse’s iconic scrum call from his mark at the World Cup is a thing of the past, as now you can’t call for a scrum from a free kick. Which team does that affect the most?
One of the big amendments is the one-stop law at a maul, where a team will have to play the ball after a maul has been stopped once, instead of the current ruling of twice. Perhaps that is why the Boks haven’t mauled as much in 2024 as they used to.
And is the proposed 20-minute red card a response to All Black flank Sam Cane’s red card in last year’s World Cup final against the Boks? It certainly seems so.
It was also refreshing to see the French Rugby Federation voicing their displeasure with the 20-minute red card this week, stating most crucially that “the implementation of this rule could encourage more aggressive play or create controversies linked to the tactical exploitation of the rule, thus negatively impacting the image of rugby”.
Also, in the first few rounds of the URC, the Stormers, Bulls, Lions and Sharks have copped a series of poor decisions against them, particularly away from home.
It’s almost as if the URC referees and TMOs are searching for ‘Gotcha’ moments, where they are trying everything in their power to rule against an SA team – almost like they are looking for every reason not to award a try, in a manner of speaking.
Let’s hope that such a mindset changes in the coming months and years to rather having ‘any reason to award the try’ instead...