{"id":156150,"date":"2025-11-23T23:44:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T23:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/156150\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T23:44:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T23:44:10","slug":"tony-ward-over-hyped-ireland-should-be-relieved-rassie-erasmuss-springboks-didnt-play-close-to-their-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/156150\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Ward: Over-hyped Ireland should be relieved Rassie Erasmus\u2019s Springboks didn\u2019t play close to their best"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"South Africa head coach Rassie Erasmus (right) and Ireland assistant coach Jonathan Sexton before the Test match on Saturday. Photo: Ramsey Cardy\/Sportsfile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/9ac9d7d7-7a45-4101-a31a-cdc264166ce0.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">South Africa head coach Rassie Erasmus (right) and Ireland assistant coach Jonathan Sexton before the Test match on Saturday. Photo: Ramsey Cardy\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Back in the amateur days we suffered many moral victories but that was then, this is now. I say that because I detect an element of thinly-disguised satisfaction despite a comprehensive defeat against a South African side very far from their best.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">We can thank our lucky stars for that even if credit is due for a staunch defence for most of the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Africa head coach Rassie Erasmus (right) and Ireland assistant coach Jonathan Sexton before the Test match on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,50534],"class_list":["post-156150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-tony-ward"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156150","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=156150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}