{"id":52279,"date":"2025-08-08T08:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T08:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/52279\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T08:39:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T08:39:07","slug":"rassie-erasmus-matt-williams-feud-heats-up-with-playing-the-man-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/52279\/","title":{"rendered":"Rassie Erasmus & Matt Williams feud heats up with ‘playing the man’ claim"},"content":{"rendered":"

Outspoken pundit and former coach Matt Williams has hit back at Rassie Erasmus after the Springboks boss mocked the Australian online.<\/p>\n

Williams has been a long-time critic of some of South African rugby\u2019s innovations under their head coach, with the former Scotland boss especially angered by what he sees as the dangers of the Bomb Squad.<\/p>\n

Publicly, he has come out with some big claims, generally aiming his ire towards the Boks<\/a>, and it has not gone unnoticed by Erasmus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rassie Erasmus\u2019 X post<\/p>\n

After Williams\u2019<\/a> latest outburst, the 52-year-old took to X, formerly Twitter, with a screenshot showing the Australian\u2019s win record as Scottish head coach, drawing particular attention to \u201c17.65%\u201d by highlighting it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMatt Williams, the rugby union coach, had a 17.65% win percentage during his tenure coaching Scotland. He coached the team in 17 matches, winning only 3 of them. Two of those wins were against Tier 2 nations, Japan and Samoa, according to Wikipedia,\u201d the text in the image read.<\/p>\n

Erasmus\u2019 caption on the post read also read: \u201cHeal Sir Matt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams has since responded to the Springboks head coach on social media with a rather pointed post.<\/p>\n

\u201cHi Rassie, playing the man and not the ball again?\u201d he wrote in rather rhetorical fashion, before adding: \u201cAlways the sign of weak argument.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rassie Erasmus\u2019 brutal response to Matt Williams\u2019 latest rant about \u2018disgraceful\u2019 Springboks and Lions series<\/a><\/p>\n

It all comes after Williams once again slammed South Africa following the British and Irish Lions\u2019 victory over the Wallabies recently.<\/p>\n

He was asked on Off The Ball whether Andy Farrell\u2019s team could be proud of their tour to Australia, which prompted him to go on a rant about the 2021 series in the Republic.<\/p>\n

\u2018An abomination\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cOn field, absolutely,\u201d he responded.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s go back to South Africa, the South African tour was one of the worst tours ever, the worst games of international rugby I think I\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way that both management teams conducted themselves was disgraceful.<\/p>\n

\u201cRassie was running on the field as a water carrier. There was a leaked video criticising referees, ringing people up, and the style of rugby was an abomination.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll they did was kick across the field and chase it. It was not played in a good spirit.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was aggressive, I have no problem with it being aggressive but it wasn\u2019t played in the spirit of rugby.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Lions are the keepers of the law. They are so special, and they got to keep going, but to suggest that this Lions tour didn\u2019t restore that absolutely tarnished image of what it meant to play Lions rugby is just a fallacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey came to Australia, and from the first second, Andy Farrell and his coaching staff made the Lions play a running game. They put the ball in hand, they took chances and made errors, because it\u2019s high-risk rugby but jeez, it was entertaining. It was fabulous to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Matt Williams: B&I Lions restored \u2018absolutely tarnished\u2019 image after \u2018disgraceful\u2019 Springboks series<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Outspoken pundit and former coach Matt Williams has hit back at Rassie Erasmus after the Springboks boss mocked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[3481,348,3482,15733,50,7196,5903,4247,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-52279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-british-and-irish-lions","tag-home-page","tag-internationals","tag-matt-williams","tag-news","tag-rassie-erasmus","tag-rugby","tag-south-africa","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}