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Rassie Erasmus had a few words for the officials amid Perth chaos
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Rassie Erasmus refused to reach for excuses or a gruelling Rugby Championship schedule after South Africa’s dramatic 42-38 defeat to Australia in Perth.
Despite the match being repeatedly disrupted by reviews, communication problems and a remarkable period where the Wallabies were reduced to just 11 men by referee Andrea Piardi, the Springbok boss insisted the result came down to his side’s own shortcomings.
Erasmus admitted South Africa had “rolled the dice” with an experimental selection and accepted Australia were the better team on the night, while also going out of his way to praise Piardi and his team of officials for managing a chaotic contest under difficult circumstances.
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“I have been, not maybe to this extent. But I guess, for the neutral, it must have been a really exciting game to watch, and I guess for Australia it must be awesome,” said Erasmus. “For us, we lost in a Springbok jersey, and against Australia. With all the disruptions and things that there were, we’ve got nobody else to blame but ourselves because of the result.
“I know the technology failed a bit and there were lots of clocks that kept on running sometimes and didn’t stop, but that didn’t have an influence on how we played. We controlled how we played, and we didn’t play well enough today to beat Australia.”
The Wallabies very nearly threw away a 25-point lead to the visitors, and Erasmus acknowledged that his team were ultimately to blame for finding themselves with that proverbial mountain to climb.
“It’s tough when there’s reviews and the clock keeps going, and then you lose 20 seconds, and there’s another review and you lose another five seconds. But we played ourselves into that position where we were 25 points behind, so we’ve got nobody else to blame. It’s us.
“We rolled the dice a little bit, and some guys hadn’t played a lot together in a long time. Not as an excuse: we picked the team and we had a game plan, and our game plan and our players and our coaching staff didn’t trump them at the end.
“I thought we had a chance at the end there. I thought maybe the cross-kick where he scored— if we didn’t lose another 30 seconds there, obviously we could have. But if we didn’t play ourselves into that position, the better team won on the night.”
Erasmus also lauded the referees for the way they handled the technical breakdown of their communications, which saw them using mobile phones to communicate.
“Just in the referees’ change room, I think the way the referees handled the game without comms was outstanding. I know it looked chaotic, but I thought they got a lot of things right by being on the telephone.”
Erasmus also refused to lay the blame on the tired squad after their victorious Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry Series win over New Zealand.
“Look, it has been a long slog, but if we won this game at the end, we would have said, “Hey boys, it’s wonderful. We’re together, we enjoy [it], we’re a tight team.” And because we lost, we’re not not a tight team. We enjoy each other’s company and, to be honest with you, it’s shit to lose games. We don’t enjoy it.
“We know our South Africans, where they are now, and we know how they feel now, and we don’t want to give them that feeling. So no, it’s not because we’ve been too long together. It’s because we didn’t play well.”
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