KEVIN MCCALLUM | Rassie Erasmus comes clean by sharing blame for All Blacks defeat

You can watch summer storms moving in over the north of Joburg from the pool deck of the Southern Sun hotel in Hyde Park. The grey-black clouds usually roll in from the west in the mid to late afternoon, a pre-dusk shower to cool the heat of the day and move some of the road grime a little closer to the curb.

The clouds feel a little closer from the deck up on the eighth floor of the hotel, the home of the Springboks, as though you could reach out and prick them to make the rain fall where you wanted and defuse the fury of the storm before it starts.

The Springboks conduct their media briefings in the whisky and cigar bar just behind the pool. Rassie Erasmus fronted both briefings there on Monday and Tuesday this week, facing up to the All Blacks postdefeat storm , holding the umbrella for his team.

It is unusual for the head coach to be rolled out twice in a week and it was, including Saturday, the third time in a week and a bit days that Erasmus had spoken to the media. When this was pointed out by a colleague in a question, Erasmus repeated his explanation from a previous question about whether he was shielding his players, then paused, smiled and asked: “Are you getting tired of me?”

“No, I’m not shielding,” said Erasmus. “The truth is that a lot of the things that we asked from them, they did. And the plan didn’t win the game for us. But it’s definitely also not the players that lost the game for us. So I’m not just shielding them; I’m taking responsibility for … some decisions we made. But obviously, we’re a group. But I don’t want players to sit and explain here why we lost if it was more on me, then I think … so I’m just trying to be honest, not shielding them.”

Erasmus said that as his assistant coaches were focusing on fixing the “lineouts, mauls and breakdowns” he would rather not have them distracted by having to wonder, “What am I going to say here, do we have to align with what we want to get out there? It takes up half an hour of us saying, OK guys, let’s not just talk nonsense or be too arrogant or whatever. It is just a little more breathing space.”

Erasmus has been at pains to take the first defeat on his and his assistants’ shoulders, saying the tactics used and the reconfiguration of the backline after Kurt-Lee Arendse’s injury was not their finest moment.

“I think sometimes we as coaches when we win, [both] players and coaches take the credit. But when we lose, sometimes the players get a lot of blame. I think this game was very much lost on decisions I made during the week, trying to change things up, maybe being too clever and then maybe making some subs at the wrong time.

“We were caught out with an early injury on Cheslin [Kolbe], which disrupted us with Jesse [Kriel] having to go to wing and Damian [de Allende] to outside centre, and then Grant [Williams], who was covering wing for us, had an injury in the game. So for our backline cohesion, we did not do our homework well enough in thinking that if Cheslin gets an injury in the first five minutes … and that’s not on the players.