VIDEO: Why Rassie packed his bags when Coetzee became Bok coach

SPOTLIGHT: In the latest episode of his podcast, Springbok head coach Rassie Erasmus revealed why he left South Africa for a coaching gig with Munster in 2016.

Back then, Erasmus was SARU’s High-Performance Manager and his sphere of responsibilities included the Under-20 side, Sevens, SA Schools and SA Women’s side.

Allister Coetzee was given the head coach role that year after Heyneke Meyer was in charge between 2012 and 2015.

Erasmus viewed the transition as an opportunity to bring about some change and one of his suggestions was to hire Mzwandile Stick as an ‘off-the-ball’ coach, which was a new role.

However, it didn’t pan out that way and Stick became the backline coach.

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“When Allister came in, I thought, ‘Let’s do this right’,” Erasmus told Stick on his podcast Rassie+.

“I’ve seen so many bugger-ups and I’ve made so many mistakes, but when I saw that we were not going to do the things I thought would work [that’s the reason for leaving].

“Without talking down on anybody, I saw potential in you [Stick]. I thought because Allister was a backline coach, let’s get you in and make you the off-the-ball coach.

“Everybody was asking what is this off-the-ball coach?

“When most people watch a game, I think 99 percent of people look at the ball.

“I thought you would be great at that because of the position you played [in Sevens] and you had to grind your way through, so we created the off-the-ball coach role way back then.”

Erasmus added: “Basically things didn’t work out. Allister made you the backline coach and I thought Pieter de Villiers should be the scrum coach, but he brought Matthew Proudfoot in.

“It’s not that I’m saying I am right, it just worked totally different than how I saw it and that’s why I went to Munster.

“I actually thought, ‘Here we go again. We are going to make the same errors’.

“Maybe Allister is right and they win, but I packed my bags and I went to Munster.

“When I saw you [Stick] as the backline coach, I thought this is the deep-end man.”

When Erasmus eventually returned to South Africa and became Director of Rugby in 2018, Stick was finally given that new role.

“Today you [Stick] are still the off-the-ball coach and I think you are one of the best in the world.

“You’ve won World Cups and you’ve won the British and Irish Lions [series].”