We were dog s*** on the day, says embarrassed Springbok coach Erasmus after Wallabies disaster

I’m not sure if Rassie Erasmus is familiar with the poetry of Robbie Burns, but he will grasp the drift of the famous line: “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

That is precisely what happened at Ellis Park over the weekend, where the plan the Boks produced from a three-week training camp yielded 22 wonderful points in 20 minutes, only for the scoring spree to give way to 38 unanswered points as the Wallabies roared home in the second half.

It appeared that the Boks were lured into Barbarians-style rugby and forgot that Test matches are won by first doing the hard yards. In short, they departed from their DNA of physicality, territorial kicking and set-piece dominance, and instead did an impersonation of the Blitzboks.

To rub salt into the wounds, the Boks lost their No 1 spot in the world rankings after the All Blacks beat the Pumas in Argentina.

Coach Rassie Erasmus said he, as head coach, would take the performance on the chin. “This is probably one of the most embarrassing press conferences I’ve done in a while,” he said. “We gave them one or two soft tries – an intercept here from a Manie Libbok pass, a pass from André Esterhuizen that went to them, and that let them back into the game.

“It wasn’t just tactical – they also physically dominated us. The longer the game went on, the stronger they got. At altitude, that’s supposed to be us. It shows what (Wallabies coach) Joe Schmidt is building there.”

Erasmus admitted the Boks drifted badly off course after a stunning opening quarter. “Grant Williams had so many breaks, Manie had so many breaks, Edwill van der Merwe, too. That changes games, but you also have to realise somewhere in the game that it’s not quite coming off.

“Their kick-to-ruck ratio was excellent – we only kicked nine times in the second half. Maybe the players felt there was space, but that’s coaching, that’s on us. We must still build the innings. Twenty-two nil is not winning a game – we ended up losing by almost 20 points.

“The saddest thing is five log points for them, and we didn’t even fight back to take the bonus point away. So we’re on zero, they’re on five. I can butter this up to sound cool and respectful, but we were really dog s**t on the day.”

Erasmus said the coaching staff would first look at themselves before blaming the players.

“We have to look first at ourselves before we point fingers at the players. From now until next Saturday, we’ll take a lot of flak, but, to be fair, we take the credit when we’re doing well, so we must take the flak when we’re doing badly. We’re very disappointed, feeling bad for our supporters and our players.

“A player doesn’t just do what he wants out there; we guide them and we pick the combinations. If it doesn’t work, maybe the combinations were wrong, maybe the plans were wrong, maybe the half-time talk was terrible.”

Erasmus added that changes are likely for next week’s return Test in Cape Town.

“We had already picked next week’s team, but that will probably change a little bit because we want to get Ethan Hooker in, we want to give Canan Moodie a start, and we want to give Morne van den Berg a start. We’ll have to rethink it.”