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Game plan: Springboks head coach Jacques Nienaber and South African Rugby Union director Rassie Erasmus should let the leashes off the players. Photo: Warren Little/Getty Images
The Springboks were successful in both these tournaments because they were said to be fighting for something bigger than a rugby game. We went into the tournament having to explain ad nauseam why we had seven forwards and one back on the substitutes’ bench in the warm-up against the All Blacks, when there are usually five or six forwards and two or three backs. The seven-one split meant that we could replace the entire scrum pack.
Our players and team have not been celebrated at any stage during this tournament. Instead there are a lot of backhanded compliments. For instance, the coaching innovation and genius of Rassie and Nienaber is described as cunning, as if they are crooks. And our physical prowess is made out to be that we are brutish dunderheads.
Our players have been feeling this pressure since the first day of this tournament and it has not let up, not for one brief moment. We are called bullies even when we essentially matched the Irish score against Romania. The shackles must be removed from our players. They must stop playing for the country. They are not the solution to our problems of racism, unemployment, poverty and inequality. And they certainly are not the answer to the insipid leadership we are forced to endure.
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