Rassie admits he has butterflies as crunch time arrives

The Rugby World Cup final is exactly one month away today (Wednesday) and Rassie Erasmus’ confidence that his Springbok team will get there means he also knows he is in for a tense 31 days.

The Boks should comfortably beat Canada in their last pool B game next Tuesday but before that there is a potentially tricky clash with Italy in Shizuoka on Friday. The national director of rugby knows that the Boks should get through with the win, after all, Italy have hardly set the Six Nations alight over the past few years.

They play at the top table in Europe, but they are a tier two rugby nation and have never progressed beyond the pool phases at a World Cup.

But here’s the thing - every South African knows what can happen if you are a bit off your game on a given day. No-one has forgotten what happened against Japan in Brighton four years ago, or perhaps more pertinently in Italy a year later. If something like that happens now, there’s no comeback like there was then.

Friday then is in every sense a knock-out fixture and it is one Erasmus has had on the back of his mind for a long time.

“I thought about this game when we were on tour in Europe last November. We lost to Italy three years ago and we shouldn’t look past that,” said Erasmus.

ANOTHER MONKEY TO BE GOT OFF THE BACK

That was a different era. The Boks weren’t down in the dumps towards the end of 2016 because they had just lost to the All Blacks by 10 points, as happened the other day in Yokohoma. That defeat in Italy came less than two months after the South Africans had been thrashed 57-15 by the Kiwis in Durban. The Boks, after losing comprehensively to England in London the week before, were in disarray.

That’s not the case now, and Erasmus knows it. But still, there is the issue of another monkey needing to be got off the Bok backs (they won comfortably against Italy a year after their defeat in Udine but that appears to have been forgotten).

"If you look at past few years, this season has been a solid one in terms of results," said the Bok coach.

"We’ve gone through a few frontiers in the last two years. The Japan game a couple of weeks ago was a case of us getting the monkey off our back, we had to get that thing out of the way, and now we have to beat Italy to do something similar. But we are used to crunch games where the stakes are high.

"Last year the match against New Zealand in Wellington was also a really crunch game for us. We wanted to win that game desperately as it gives you that winning confidence and momentum and belief that you can win a World Cup. Everybody feels you are in with a big chance of a Rugby World Cup win if you can beat New Zealand away.

"This was always going to be another of those games. It is important because we have to win it to get into the quarterfinals.”

SIMULATING PLAYOFF PRESSURE

As Bok flyhalf Handre Pollard explained earlier in the week, Erasmus has been preparing the players for the pressure of World Cup playoff rugby by ratcheting up the internal pressure in specific games. Erasmus reckons it is something that has been met with mixed success.

"We have tried to simulate the pressure we will experience in the big games at this World Cup but I wouldn’t say we have always been successful," he said.

"We definitely targeted Wellington (against the All Blacks) a year ago, and Wellington again this year. We won and drew so that was good. But we also targeted the New Zealand clash in the first pool game at this World Cup as one of those that it was imperative to win from the perspective of building up momentum and confidence. We wanted to see how we could manage that as being a crunch game like a semifinal or quarterfinal. We didn’t win that game.

"So we definitely managed to get it right a few times, we have succeeded in a way, but for example we didn’t get it right in the New Zealand pool game."

As he himself has said, the All Blacks are a very good rugby team, so perhaps it is the perfectionist in Erasmus coming out when he is unhappy that his team do not beat New Zealand every time they play them. He’d clearly like another crack at them a month hence, but before that his team have to get through a few other frontiers, starting with Italy. For Erasmus, the moment of truth arrives now.

“Now it is the real deal, it is not a practice situation anymore. We have been building for 20 test matches towards this point. This is do-or-die. Players feel it. I have to admit that I do have butterflies (caused by nerves). We’ve lost to Italy within the last three years. They will be really up for this game as they won’t believe they can beat the All Blacks but they will believe they can beat us.

"Plus they have an eight-day turn-around and have been building towards this game for a year and a half. They’ve played and beaten the other smaller teams in their pool, now they can throw the kitchen sink at our game. So we are going to have to be smart and show composure and apply what we have learned when it comes to winning the big moments."

BOKS USED TO THE CONDITIONS

Of course, the background to Erasmus’ nervousness isn’t just that Shizuoka is a playoff game. It is also based on the knowledge that the humid conditions have introduced just a slight lottery element to the pool phases.

At the start of the week, the prediction was that Friday’s game would be played in a deluge. While that initial dire forecast has been adjusted quite a bit away from almost storm conditions to something much more temperate, as appears to happen with some frequency in Japan, Erasmus is still expecting it to be wet.

"They do play more in these conditions," said Erasmus in response to a question on which team would start with the advantage if it is wet.

"Having coached against Treviso and Benneton while I was at Munster, I can tell you they play in the northern hemisphere in terrible conditions sometimes. They play in ice and rain and stuff like that, they are used to playing with wet balls.

"But we have been here for almost a month now so we can’t use that as an excuse. The guys from Cape Town grow up experiencing quite a bit of wet weather rugby, while we as the Boks tour all over the world on our end of year tours and play in very wet conditions sometimes. So that can’t be an excuse.

"I also think that in terms of game-plan, the way we are currently playing in the humid conditions which are, pretty much, wet weather conditions, the weather shouldn’t be a big factor for us."