{"id":154431,"date":"2025-11-22T22:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T22:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/154431\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T22:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T22:13:09","slug":"rassie-erasmus-praises-south-africas-dominant-scrum-after-sweet-win-over-ireland-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/154431\/","title":{"rendered":"Rassie Erasmus praises South Africa\u2019s dominant scrum after \u2018sweet\u2019 win over Ireland \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rassie Erasmus<\/a> gave South Africa<\/a>\u2019s performance and the support they received from their travelling fans at the Aviva Stadium, a double thumbs up, literally after the final whistle, a Test match the visitors won 24-13, deservedly so, and a first victory in Dublin since 2012.<\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s head coach explained that the coaches\u2019 box is soundproofed and that is why he employed a hand gesture in acknowledging the Springboks supporters and not as others had surmised was a defiant gesture to the Irish supporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a thank you to our people. We\u2019ve got respect for the way the Irish people support their team. This is a special stadium. I am glad the way that they welcomed RG [Snyman] on to the pitch [to celebrate his 50th cap].<\/p>\n

Erasmus was gracious in victory, or as much as he could be, while stressing his team\u2019s dominance in the scrum, had received a just reward in terms of forcing cards and a penalty try. He acknowledged that Ireland had enjoyed the nap hand against South Africa in recent head-to-head matches, so it did make the win \u201ca little sweeter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nice, any beer [which he was drinking] is nice after a win, especially against a quality team like Ireland, who\u2019s totally dominated us since we\u2019ve been a group together. If you take the five games, they\u2019re still 3-2 up against us, so we won\u2019t get carried away with this, but yeah the beer is a little bit sweeter and we\u2019re just thankful that we could manage to beat them here.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a long season for our guys. I know a lot of the guys must go to Japan and to URC games and so on, but I also know the whole Leinster team, only two not starting from Leinster in that game (sic), they also have to go to URC, so it worked both ways, but we are proud after a long season to grind through a win against a team like them at home, for the first time in 13 or 14 years.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cthe game was very physical, and, obviously, it was a 20-minute red card game (referring to the red card given to James Ryan by the Foul Play Review Officer, Dan Jones), which I thought was the right call.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought we were dominant for most parts of the game but just couldn\u2019t kill it [off] inside their 22. It was hectic, it was difficult to manage, it was sometimes difficult to understand who\u2019s off and who\u2019s on, and who comes back, who\u2019s gone for a HIA and who\u2019s injured.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think we were dominant in scrums. I\u2019m not saying we should have got yellow cards or not, but we\u2019ve been part of quite a few games that were like this, where we had to grind it out to 14 men.\u201d<\/p>\n

South African hooker Malcolm Marx, who was confirmed as the 2025 World Player of the Year, paid tribute to Ireland\u2019s resilience. He had a brilliant game on a personal level, a continuation of an outstanding season.<\/p>\n

\" South Africa’s Malcolm Marx and Damian de Allende celebrate after the match. Photograph: Gary Carr\/Inpho <\/p>\n

Marx said: \u201cI thought they [Ireland] did extremely well in the second half, they held us out, gave away a few penalties [in doing so] but they are a quality side, I think they showed what they\u2019re all about.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are a quality side; it\u2019s always going to be a tough matchup. The character they showed was immense, but obviously a massive congratulations to them too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Erasmus was asked about the hugely physical nature of South Africa\u2019s performance, but he was quick to point out that he felt that Ireland didn\u2019t lose anything in comparison when weighing up that attribute.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was physical, but I don\u2019t think they [Ireland] came out second best based on the physicality. If they had scored in the last four minutes, there would have been a kickoff and the match was on [again]. We were dominant in the scrums but overall, we weren\u2019t that dominant.\u201d<\/p>\n

South Africa minus a glut of players will travel to play Wales in the final Test match of their season which falls outside the international window.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rassie Erasmus gave South Africa\u2019s performance and the support they received from their travelling fans at the Aviva…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[53359,61,60,1449,43,19907,1450],"class_list":["post-154431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-autumn-nations-series","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ireland-rugby","tag-news","tag-rassie-erasmus","tag-springboks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}