VIDEO: Rassie reveals his 'plan' for Los Pumas
If they want to snatch the Rugby Championship title from the Springboks, Argentina needs to score tries. Still, coach Rassie Erasmus knows the threat the visitors will pose at the Mbombela Stadium on Saturday.
On Tuesday Erasmus spoke frankly about that threat while also giving Argentina’s coach Felipe Contempomi credit for their surge in the Championship this season.
“They will have a plan, and the plan will be to run us off our feet,” Erasmus claimed boldly.
“But our plan is to win.
“We lost one game in the Championship by one point.
“Now we have the opportunity at home [to do it].
“None of these guys have won a full Rugby Championship.
“We are going out to win, not try and stop them,” Erasmus said.
The Springboks need only a point from the match to guarantee their first Rugby Championship title since the abbreviated version in 2019 and their first full tournament title since 2009, while they will also clinch the title if Argentina wins the match without a bonus point based on competition points.
The only permutation that would see Argentina snatch the title from the Boks is if Los Pumas win with a bonus point and deny the hosts a point, which would see them claim the title based on the fact that they would have had two wins over South Africa.
(Article continues below…)
“We are hoping that our chances are much better with six fresh guys on this side who didn’t play and also Eben [Etzebeth] who didn’t play a full match there as well as Siya [Kolisi] who would be a little fresh,” the coach explained.
“And they are a team that likes it fast and loose.
“They have a lot of Sevens players so they don’t play with a lot of structure that they break you down with.
“They have a coach who knows how he wants to coach them and a team that knows how they want to play.
“So we will try and plan on our terms this weekend and we didn’t totally manage that last weekend.
“Their players are playing all over the world and they get them together and still perform like this and beat all three Southern Hemisphere countries – it’s only us that got a log point,” Erasmus explained.
“But I think it is nice to have countries that make it, sometimes you put them down and they don’t get opportunities but they find a way to climb up again.
“We were also in that boat and we also managed to get out.
Springbok hooker Bongi Mbonambi added, saying: “They bring the physicality that we always want to bring to other teams.
“We know that we have Springbok standards that we want to achieve in the game.”
