swearing in front of gathered journalists and cameramen.<\/a><\/p>\nHe has since faced attacks from the New Zealand media, including calls for World Rugby to take action against him for his various perceived indiscretions throughout the series.<\/p>\n
Now, after naming his side for the third Test three days earlier than required, Erasmus fronted the media on Monday to address the furore and accuse the Kiwis of being the ones who have broken protocols.<\/p>\n
Speaking about Rennie and his angry reaction to the comments, Erasmus said: \u201cMy frustration was not so much that that\u2019s his opinion, but one can\u2019t make opinion facts and the moment it gets said as a fact, I mean, really, there\u2019s now clear protocols in play. You send five clips into AMS, which is a system, and there you raise your concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe protocols are clearly in place. You must have a pre-match meeting with the referee with the other coach present and that\u2019s how you raise your things; you put them on the AMS system.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I am going to say it again: after the game, when you guys told me that in the media conference, it\u2019s just frustrating because once you put a narrative out like that, everybody starts focusing on that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI myself would not be a person that talks with authority about scrums, but I do know how Daan (Human) coaches the scrums. And we will never ever in our life say let\u2019s walk around the team because that\u2019s not our strength. That\u2019s not how we do this.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I\u2019m not frustrated with the fact that Dave wants to get it out. But there\u2019s a lot of things I want to get out about New Zealand, but I only have five clips I can send in post the match. So if I name another four here, it\u2019s against the protocol because the protocol is sending through the AMS.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I can guarantee you we don\u2019t want to put more pressure on the referees through the media. If you talk about changing three players before a match, which was tactical, and people say that\u2019s against the laws and against the spirit of the game, surely coming to a press conference and naming things that are out there now, it\u2019s another tactic to do it that way.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s more the frustrating part. I\u2019m friends with him [Rennie], but I understand what he\u2019s trying to do. As long as that doesn\u2019t succeed, but Nika [Amashukeli] is a sharp referee. He comes from Georgia, he knows scrums, he has coached Georgian, he has played rugby himself. He knows how scrums get handled and that was the frustration.”<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/0_GettyImages-2233957145.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
The scrum has been a big topic of debate(Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Erasmus was also asked about the alterations he made to the named side ahead of the second Test, which saw changes at fly-half and wing days after the initial announcement, followed by the 11th-hour front row reshuffle that put Gerhard Steenekamp, 39-year-old Deon Fourie and Thomas du Toit – who were all named on the bench on Monday – in the starting side ahead of Ox Nche, Malcolm Marx and Wilco Louw.<\/p>\n
Such a move would be against the laws in World Rugby competitions such as the World Cup, but the Springboks coach exploited the fact the Greatest Rivalry series has been organised by the two teams and is not overseen by SANZAAR. As such, Erasmus was not technically bound by the normal rules that dictate sides must be named at least 48 hours before kick-off, with changes only allowed afterwards in the event of injuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see there\u2019s a bit of an issue with that,” he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, an hour before the match you can give in your team sheet; if it\u2019s within your 23 you can swap the whole bench around and play the other guys, that\u2019s not against the laws of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor all honesty, we thought it\u2019s going to be a really wet game and I\u2019m serious about that. I mean, there\u2019s no doubt that heavier guys scrum better on heavier fields and lighter guys like hard fields.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the front row that we started with, the pitch was nice and hard and was dry, and between Deon and Gerhard and Thomas, Thomas is one of the smallest guys around but certainly Deon and Gerhard are a little bit less bulky than Ox and Wilco and so on.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo yes, we thought, let\u2019s look at the weather<\/a>, let\u2019s get to the pitch, let\u2019s see how wet it really is. And when we got there, the pitch was dry and hard and firm, and that\u2019s why we picked it that way, and this weekend we are going to do it the other way around.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rassie Erasmus fronted up a press conference on Monday after naming his team three days earlier than required…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[36918,5903,30347,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-756307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-new-zealand-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-south-africa-rugby-team","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756307","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=756307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Springboks](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/0_GettyImages-2284893894.jpg\")
<\/p>\n