Legendary All Blacks boss Sir Steve Hansen has praised the way Rassie Erasmus is building depth with the Springboks.<\/p>\n
South Africa defeated a near-full-strength Scotland team 42-28 at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday in round two of the Nations Championship, despite Erasmus making 10 changes to his starting XV from the side that beat England a fortnight ago.<\/p>\n
Experienced campaigners Handre Pollard, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Damian Willemse and Jesse Kriel were named in the run-on team against Scotland, but the Boks had just 429 international caps in the starting line-up, a tally that paled in comparison to their opponent\u2019s 628.<\/p>\n
In fact, five of the starting forward pack had less than 10 caps, while that number was two in the backs and five on the bench.<\/p>\n
Despite the inexperience, the Boks managed to secure a win over a strong Scotland team who were only missing a handful of star players like Blair Kinghorn, Huw Jones and Darcy Graham, with Erasmus also experimenting with players like Pollard, who shifted to centre, and Lions full-back Quan Horn who came on at fly-half.<\/p>\n
Sir Steve Hansen\u2019s verdict on Springboks\u2019 depth<\/p>\n
Hansen<\/a>, who was part of back-to-back Rugby World Cup-winning campaigns with the All Blacks, the latter as head coach, praised the manner in which Erasmus is building the depth and the performance of South Africa against the Scots<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, the first thing you\u2019ve got to take is they\u2019re building some wonderful depth, and they are doing that deliberately. You look at the French team, and they are doing the same thing,\u201d he said of the Boks<\/a> on the Rugby Unity podcast.<\/p>\n \u201cI think back to the past when we [the All Blacks] tried to do that and said we wanted a squad of two teams, so 30 players that you could pick and wouldn\u2019t make any difference \u2013 and I think that\u2019s what\u2019s happening with South Africa.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s that mindset of we don\u2019t care who we pick. We\u2019re good enough. We\u2019ve got enough players to challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n The former All Blacks boss added that in order to develop that kind of depth, players actually have to take the field in Test matches. However, the team still needs to have world-class operators.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea is having four or five world-class players in the discussion all the time,\u201d Hansen continued.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you can have more than that, great, but you can\u2019t develop people if they don\u2019t play. So, they\u2019re using the tournament, they\u2019re using games to do that, and they\u2019re getting success with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Springboks team: Five takeaways as Rassie Erasmus takes \u2018well-travelled route\u2019 with uncapped players while \u2018rarest of beasts\u2019 shows South Africa looking to \u2018hone in\u2019 on new gameplan<\/a><\/p>\n All Blacks greats: The three teams that have real depth and why Rassie Erasmus must be happy as Springboks \u2018flex their muscles\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Stats can lie<\/p>\n Another takeaway he gleaned from the match was that Scotland beat the Springboks in just about every statistic, except for the scoreline.<\/p>\n \u201cThe other thing I took out of the game is once again stats don\u2019t always tell you the truth,\u201d he remarked<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cScotland had more possession; they had 64% of the ball. They made double the contact metres, and if you just looked at the stats, you would say Scotland won the game. But what we forget is you\u2019ve actually got to do how accurate you are with the ball you\u2019ve got? What do you do with it? If you\u2019re very good at scoring tries, you\u2019re not going to have a lot of possession because you have to give it back to them to kick off all the time.<\/p>\n