MIND GAMES: Rassie shrugs off All Blacks’ ‘slowing game’ claims as war of words intensifies

Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus has shrugged off the narrative coming out of New Zealand that the Springboks are slowing down the game.

Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus would be forgiven if he played the old Rage Against the Machine song Killing in the Name for this team before the first Test against the All Blacks at Ellis Park this Saturday.

The band’s frontman, Zack de la Rocha, rages in the 1993 hit, “And now you do what they told ya (now you’re under control)… f**k you I won’t do what you tell me”, over and over.

The Boks won’t be changing their style to suit a certain narrative, put out in the media by the likes of assistant coach Tana Umaga and then intensified through social media.

“My opinion is New Zealand’s played four matches and there’s certainly been a narrative out there, which is very technical around the speed of the game and the slowing down of the game,” Erasmus said at a media conference on Monday.

“You can see on their social media, they are advocating this high-intensity, multiphase game, saying: ‘nobody can keep up with us.’ They are not hiding it.

“There are always three truths – New Zealand’s truth, the world’s truth, and our (the Boks’) truth. If you look at the last two games against New Zealand in Auckland and in Wellington, were those slow games?

“I mean, New Zealand beat us in the first one against Auckland (the All Blacks won 24-17) and protected their record there.

“Then we got a good one in the second one (the Boks won by a record 43-10). We try to find the balance so that when games become clutch and crunch, that you have a system that you can fall back onto if you need to.”

Springbok laws manager Jaco Peyper, a respected former Test referee, joined Erasmus to explain the finer details of what the reality is versus the perception of the Boks’ style. He also detailed how the feedback system with World Rugby works.

“At the World Rugby ‘shape of the game’ meeting at the beginning of the year, all the big technical issues were discussed. The things that come out of those meetings are what we call the key focus areas for referees.

“That’s basically the contract between refereeing and coaching. Coach your players to play this way, we’ll try and referee this way.

“The five games that we’ve (the Boks) have played, we’ve not had one piece of feedback warning that we’ve slowed down the game.

“Maybe they’ve (the All Blacks) have played against teams that are in pre-season mode. Maybe there’s something there, but we’ve certainly not got negative feedback around it.