Dr Rassie prescribing bitter pills for World Rugby

THE suits at World Rugby no doubt watch Springbok games with one hand over an eye as they ask themselves, “What is Dr Erasmus going to prescribe to his players this time?”

- MIKE GREENAWAY

Often, Rassie’s dose is bitter pills for World Rugby, the rigid runners of the game. Boring old farts (former England captain Will Carling’s words, not mine) who cannot shrug their suspicion of anything outside the tried and tested tramlines of the game.

The rabbits Rassie pulled out of the hat against Italy in Gqeberha are well-documented, and immediately, there was praise and uproar in equal measure around the rugby globe. Some hailed maverick Rassie for continuing to blaze new trails in the sport, while others branded the Boks cheats and disrespectful. Most of the negative reaction was typically from the Northern Hemisphere, where a stereotype of the Springboks has lingered for over a century.

It seems they will forever be Neanderthal brutes who bludgeon the opposition, and if that one-dimensional approach doesn’t work, there is no Plan B. To be fair, this old trope was not without merit in the amateur days when the South Africans were bigger than everyone else, but in the professional era, gym programmes have cancelled the size factor out to a significant degree.

The Springboks still have naturally big men, but they have had to move beyond “route one” to stay ahead of the pack, and the likes of Cheslin Kolbe and Kurt-Lee Arendse hardly fit the “Bok bulldozer” cliché.