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Erasmus: I was an ****hole - Bok boss releases another outstanding team talk

Jessie Kriel and Rassie Erasmus

Former Springbok head coach Rassie Erasmus has released another one of his Rugby World Cup team talks, in which he admitted that he had been ‘an ****hole’ in his playing days.

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Erasmus shared the video on his Twitter account and it’s gone down well in rugby circles.

Erasmus, who has been linked with succeeding Eddie Jones for the England job, gave the speech during Rugby World Cup in Japan.

“Some guys understand – ‘shit, I must keep on sacrificing’ – these are the guys, those that we say are has-beens, because they don’t play a lot of rugby long, those entitled ones.

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“This is that ownership part. You take ownership of this whole thing. S***, I’m always going to sacrifice. I’m honoured, I’m desperate, I get the reward, but s***, I’m taking ownership of this thing.

“I went through two years, and I said it to the Stormers last year, when nobody told me, ‘you’re being an absolute d***’. I was player of the year, good contract, great money. I was starting every Test match, we were winning 17 Test matches in a row; but a guy called Harry Viljoen, who was a businessman who didn’t follow rugby.

“He eventually came in and had to just drop me. Then my buddies started telling. I was like ‘why is that guy dropping me? [and they said], ‘because you’re an ****hole.’

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“Because you’re so entitled Rassie. You’re a little bit of a virus in the team. You’re getting everything but you’re moaning about training sessions’. I was such a bad person that my wife also told me that.

“So if you don’t take ownership yourself about this…this ownership is also about the team.

“If you don’t have the balls to tell one of your teammates ‘hey, you’re being a d***, you’re being an arsehole’ in this entitled mode, then you’re also still not taking ownership.

“Boys, this is something that I’m going to show you later, this is a big part of our team selection. You can be the most brilliant rugby player, but if you’re this entitled person, and I’m not saying that there’s a s***load of you sitting here, then you’re going to go through that.”

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GrahamVF 8 minutes ago
The times are changing, and some Six Nations teams may be left behind

The main problem is that on this thread we are trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. Rugby union developed as distinct from rugby league. The difference - rugby league opted for guaranteed tackle ball and continuous phase play. Rugby union was based on a stop start game with stanzas of flowing exciting moves by smaller faster players bookended by forward tussles for possession between bigger players. The obsession with continuous play has brought the hybrid (long before the current use) into play. Backs started to look more like forwards because they were expected to compete at the tackle and breakdowns completely different from what the original game looked like. Now here’s the dilemma. Scrum lineout ruck and maul, tackling kicking handling the ball. The seven pillars of rugby union. We want to retain our “World in Union” essence with the strong forward influence on the game but now we expect 125kg props to scrum like tractors and run around like scrum halves. And that in a nutshell is the problem. While you expect huge scrums and ball in play time to be both yardsticks, you are going to have to have big benches. You simply can’t have it both ways. And BTW talking about player safety when I was 19 I was playing at Stellenbosch at a then respectable (for a fly half) 160lbs against guys ( especially in Koshuis rugby) who were 100 lbs heavier than me - and I played 80 minutes. You just learned to stay out of their way. In Today’s game there is no such thing and not defending your channel is a cardinal sin no matter how unequal the task. When we hybridised with union in semi guaranteed tackle ball the writing was on the wall.

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