Boks' 'poor man's Henry Pollock' shares why he 'hated' Rassie Erasmus

South Africa head coach Rassie Erasmus’ once strained relationship with former team-mate Bobby Skinstad has been “repaired”, according to Skinstad.

The two South Africa captains’ careers overlapped, which saw them competed for a place in the Springboks back-row for four years, having made their Test debuts months apart in 1997.

Joining the Stick to Rugby podcast recently, the 2007 World Cup winner Skinstad, who jokingly referred to himself as “the poor man’s Henry Pollock”, explained how the pair “hated each other” during their playing days, but have worked together since retiring and “repaired” their relationship.

While Erasmus moved into coaching once he had hung up his boots, Skinstad moved into punditry and commentary. It was in that role that he helped provide Erasmus with footage and stats, where he experienced first-hand how the Springboks boss “was different to everybody else”.

Skinstad went on to describe his former team-mate as an “innovator”, describing his work as “incredible”.

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“He definitely thinks out of the box,” the 42-cap Springbok said.

“He was a creative player. We hated each other because he competed for the same position. I became a commentator, and he started doing a lot of data analytics and stats and he was asking SuperSport stuff. We gathered all these stats and I phoned him up, I was like ‘Rassie, what are you looking for?’ And we actually started doing similar appraisal work of what he was doing, and then I realised how much he was doing that was different to everybody else and he’s just carried on. He’s just gone on leaps and bounds.

“I hadn’t got on with him. South Africa were playing a kicking game, we were castigated because we were kicking the ball away all the time. But it was proven that if you play less time with ball in hand than the opposition, and they are running at you, you will win more often. He picked that up, so he was like ‘how do I get that across?’ So he asked us for all the stats and the footage and I asked him why, and the relationship repaired because we weren’t competing for the same jersey anymore. I got to get a very close look and appraisal of how he was doing it, even at a provincial level, which is incredible.

“Innovators have to do things differently.”