Rassie must finish what he started

"The problem with South African rugby is that coaches grow by learning from their mistakes, but in this country they don’t get an opportunity to do that.”

The above quote came from Laurie Mains, who would probably find it ironic if he learned his view was being used to defend Rassie Erasmus. The pair had an acrimonious fall-out when they were both involved at the Cats.

It has been a trying season for Erasmus and Stormers rugby – and it may have been made more difficult by the heightened expectations which increased the pressure on a Stormers team perhaps not yet equipped to deal with it.

By going the second half of the 2008 Super 14 season unbeaten, they marked themselves as contenders. So when 2009 started it was no longer a case of “We are just working to improve on our play and will see how far that will take us”. At an early stage of the season the pressure started intensifying as home games to the Blues and the Sharks were lost.

That Sharks game was a significant one as it served as a microcosm for where the Stormers may have gone wrong this year.

The Stormers started the match looking as though they wanted to run the ball from everywhere. It was so unlike Erasmus, who has long been a master of the suffocation game.

Even before that game was completed, however, Erasmus realised his mistake. In the second half he sent out a message to his players that they must play for position before unleashing their attacking game. In the wake of the loss, the emphasis switched to the need to “get the right balance between the kicking and the attacking game”.

But the Stormers have kicked poorly this season. A look back at the videos of last year’s winning run will show that the Stormers were one of the better kicking and chasing teams in the competition. This year they just haven’t managed to put this aspect of their game together, and they have not been helped by the inability of one flyhalf to get any distance with his field kicking and the allround playing deficiencies of the other.

The Stormers will struggle to win anything until they have a flyhalf who can dominate both with the boot and with the ball in his hand. This is not a new problem to the Stormers and my money says that Erasmus has identified this problem and will be working towards getting it right – provided he gets a chance to do so.

The official word from the Western Province administration is that they will give Erasmus a chance to learn from his mistakes, and damn right too. Erasmus is not in the same position as Peter de Villiers was last year when he took over the Springboks. Erasmus never took over a champion team, he took over a team of strugglers.

People keep telling me that the Stormers cannot use injuries as an excuse, and I agree the injury situation should not be used as a mask for performances which have clearly been well below par. Yet I listened to John Plumtree talking after the Crusaders game about how much his team’s injuries had impacted on the campaign, and the Sharks haven’t had nearly as many injuries as the Stormers.

That injuries can have a big impact is a fact. In 2007, for instance, the Waratahs lost Phil Waugh – and finished near the bottom of the log. The last year, under the same coach, Waugh was back, and they played in the final.

The Bulls also didn’t look too clever last season when Victor Matfield was in France and Frans Ludeke was in his first year as coach. They finished well down the table after winning the competition in Heyneke Meyer’s last season in charge. In 2009, however, the Bulls are strong contenders again to go all the way – and they have the same coach.

Talking of Meyer, he is the best example of why it might be too simplistic to just look at the wins and losses column when assessing a coach’s suitability for the job. Meyer’s Bulls team finished last in the 2002 Super 14, and the Bulls board came close to sacking him.

We know the rest of the history and what a costly mistake it would have been for the Bulls to have dropped Meyer. The Stormers bosses need to be completely sure that they would not be doing the same if they cut Erasmus. I don’t think they can be sure, so Erasmus must stay on and get a chance to continue next year what he started in 2008.