Nick Mallett has questioned Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus’ late front-row switch ahead of Friday night’s 21-19 defeat to France in Paris.
Erasmus promoted Gerhard Steenekamp, Jan-Hendrik Wessels and Thomas du Toit to the starting lineup, with Ox Nché, Malcolm Marx and Wilco Louw coming off the bench in the 35th minute when the Boks were trailing 21-7.
The Bok boss explained afterwards that the coaching staff had been considering the switch throughout the week, having named the team on Monday.
“It was a little bit of an eye on the World Cup, looking at how that combination went. But as we sit here, it didn’t work because we lost.”
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Speaking on the Talking Boks podcast, Mallett agreed the move had backfired.
“I was a bit concerned by seeing the change of the front row so late,” said the former Bok coach. “We’d spoken about how pleased we were, and me in particular, about Wilco [starting], that we could actually impose our game on them in the first 20 minutes.
“And that is, for the Springboks, dominance in the scrum, dominance in the air, strong ball-carrying, direct, very, very physical defence and playing territory.
“It seemed to me that changing to an athletic front row, which isn’t as good at scrum time, was almost trying to match France’s way of playing, which was obviously to play with speed and pace.
“So I’m not sure quite why we did it, but for me it didn’t work because we didn’t get any scrum dominance. And we started playing like France.”
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Mallett suggested Erasmus may have been concerned about the ability of his heavier front row to cope with France’s pace.
“France come out of the gates really quickly. They are a very mobile, quick, athletic team and play with huge pace in the first 10, 15 minutes. They can easily go 14 points up quickly, which they did, of course, in this game.
“Maybe he was thinking, ‘Wilco Louw, will he be able to keep up defensively?’ Because Wilco is an outstanding scrummager and carries it up. He’s got quite good hands, but he hasn’t got lateral movement and pace.
“I personally would always start with the best tighthead scrummager to impose our game on them, to put them under pressure, give them bad ball on their put-in and really good ball and potentially penalties on our put-in.
“And then you’ve got Ox Nché, who can carry well, and he’s the best loosehead in the world. And then Malcolm Marx is the best hooker in the world.
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“Depending on how the game’s going, if we’re up by 15, 20 points, you can bring the other guys on with 35 minutes to go.
“But if we are really fighting our way through a really tough battle, you keep these guys there for 60 minutes, and then you bring on the pacey guys for the last 20.
“So that is the way I would have done it.
“But I think Rassie probably thought, ‘If I have a quicker and more athletic front row, maybe we can counter. Our forwards will be faster around the field and we’ll be able to stop a lot of these marauding French tries where they use the width of the field, they use their forwards, offload out of contact and they’re very mobile.’
“I think he wanted to match mobility with mobility, put it that way. But unfortunately, it didn’t work. We were down 14-0 quite rapidly and 21-7.
“And the fightback came, but then we weren’t accurate enough in our attack.”
The post Mallett: Rassie’s front-row gamble backfired appeared first on SA Rugby magazine.
Nick Mallett has questioned Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus’ late front-row switch ahead of Friday night’s 21-19 defeat to France in Paris.
The post Mallett: Rassie’s front-row gamble backfired appeared first on SA Rugby magazine. Read More
