What Rassie Erasmus said on refereeing in Springboks loss to Ireland

Rassie Erasmus has shared his thoughts on how Saturday’s 24-25 defeat for the Springboks in Durban was handled by the team of officials led by referee Karl Dickson. Trailing 6-16 at the break, South Africa roared back in the second half to take a 24-19 lead on 65 minutes after Handre Pollard successfully kicked his eighth penalty off the tee.

However, instead of progressing from there to take the win and seal a 2-0 Test series victory, Ciaran Frawley struck two drop goals to dramatically tip the result in Ireland’s favour and leave the series ending in a 1-1 draw.

“You can sit here with a sad face and think out excuses but the best team won on the day,” volunteered Erasmus, who now has recently retired ref Jaco Peyper working as part of the Springboks backroom staff.

“I thought the referee [Dickson] was good. I think the area we thought they [Ireland] would come at us was the breakdown, he refereed that well. I think he refereed the scrums well.

“I just think Ireland, really at the end when it mattered, we fought back from a long way at half-time and we really converted when we had to but just that last minute, they did better than us.

“Obviously we’d love to be 2-0, now it’s a drawn series. Between us and them it’s always two, three points and it’s always very tight. They definitely was in the mood of, ‘Listen, this is the last game of our season, after this we have got five weeks' break’.

“The way they came out firing, we expected that but they really, really were good in that first half. At the end, it was a really good drop goal, well executed and we couldn’t stop that. I thought we did fight back very well second half but it wasn’t good enough and that is why Ireland is one of the top teams in the world.”

South Africa failed to score a single try in the match, the attack missing the delicacy of veteran Willie le Roux at full-back as he was concussed in the second minute and replaced by rookie Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu.

“When Willie is there our attack functions a bit better. Sascha definitely brings something different to the game, which is individual brilliance… he certainly didn’t look out of his place only playing his third game.

“Willie’s vision and feel for the game, he is maybe not the youngest and the fastest anymore but he is definitely somebody who links the two wings and the centres very well with each other.

“It’s sad to lose, not nice, and I know as we are disappointed. A lot of the fans will be disappointed as well. I wouldn’t say positives but I will say the experience that Sascha felt against a team which is really well organised and is ranked in the top one, two always in the world the last couple of years, he will take that and will use that going forward.”

South Africa’s maul is usually a potent attacking weapon but they steered away from it in the first half after Joe McCarthy engineered a crucial stop and they instead allowed Pollard to kick at the poles with their penalties rather than to the corner in the hope of driving their way over.

“Our lineout maul, we don’t want to maul against Ireland because Ireland are very technical at the mauls and (James) Ryan has a very unique way of stopping mauls. Not a lot of teams get a lot of results from mauling, so mauling wasn’t in the plan of our game.

“When coaching against Paul O’Connell you are always under pressure there. I thought our options from the lineouts could have been better, our attacking from the lineout could have been better. It was a quality team that put pressure on us… but it wasn’t the main concern of the game. The main concern was that first half.”