Rassie hits back at Matt Williams' comments on Kitshoff's injury

SPOTLIGHT: Springbok head coach Rassie Erasmus has responded to Matt Williams’ comments about Steven Kitshoff’s neck injury and retirement.

The former Scotland head coach has been a vocal critic of South Africa’s ‘Bomb Squad’ tactic over the last couple of years as he believes it is a safety risk.

It seems that it is still playing on his mind as he criticised the six-two or seven-one bench split between backs and forwards again in the latest episode of the DSPN podcast with Martin Devlin.

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“I admire the intellectual thinking of this as a coach,” he said.

“I don’t have a problem with the coaches.

“This is not a problem with the selection or why they are doing it. I get it; it works. France against Ireland the other day, it absolutely works, but what does that do to our game?

“A seven-one means it is two packs of forwards and one group of backs.

“Can Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Australia and Argentina compete against South Africa, New Zealand and France if that’s the way the game goes?. The answer to that is ‘no’.

“By bringing fresh guys off the bench, what’s it doing to the guys’ spines when it’s being compacted unbelievably for 80 minutes?

“What about Kitshoff, what happened to his spine in South Africa? Do we know if that was a result of the scrummaging that they are put through?”

Those comments on Kitshoff have hit a nerve, and Erasmus responded on social media.

“Nee wat [no man] !! How can a 6/2 or 7/1 split contribute to Kitchie’s injury? ‘Do we know’ No you don’t,” said the Bok coach

Erasmus made it a point by screen-grabbing Williams’ comments when he posted his response

See the post below…

Nee wat !! How can a 6/2 or 7/1 split contribute to Kitchie’s injury ? “Do we know” No you dont 🤫 pic.twitter.com/HMLa2kfNfL

— Johan Erasmus (@RassieRugby) April 16, 2025