Rassie a tough act to follow

TACKLING GOLIATH

- JOHN GOLIATH

SOUTH Africans tend to live their best lives in December ... excuse me, I meant to say “Dezemba’”. “That's January's worries,’ is one of our favourite things to say around the braai when the kids remind us about that stationery list. When we eventually take that list, we’re shocked that it has a page two.

Now it’s panic stations - we have to go to the bank, or an uncle or aunty, to borrow money because a few tubes of Pritt cost the same as two six-packs of beer.

That's also how it used to be when it came to the Springboks’ succession planning before Rassie Erasmus took over in 2018. There was no succession plan for coaches and no long-term plan for players.

The period between 2007 and 2010 was the Springboks’ “Dezemba’, with a Rugby World Cup win in 2007 followed by a British & Irish Lions triumph and a Tri-Nations win in 2009. But after that, Januworry’ lasted almost a decade. Ageing Springbok teams failed to win the World Cup in 2011 and 2015 because succession planning had to take a back seat to immediate results.

That changed when Erasmus took over, knowing he had to rebuild the Springboks to target the 2023 Rugby World Cup. However, he managed to do the business in 2019 before following it up with the win in France four years later.