Rassie Erasmus reveals how phone call with Nigel Owens revolutionised Springboks

South Africa enter the quarter-finals of the World Cup as the only team in the entire competition that have not been carded yet, and director of rugby Rassie Erasmus believes that is down to a conversation he had with former referee Nigel Owens last year.

Ahead of the Springboks’ quarter-final clash against hosts France in Paris on Sunday, Erasmus admitted how his side “got it wrong” in recent years in terms of communication with officials, citing the 2021 British & Irish Lions series as one of those incidents.

But a phone call with the refereeing centurion helped the Springboks turn a corner and ingratiate themselves with referees. Erasmus said that Owens’ main message was that a referee must be respected whether they are right or wrong and they will in turn reciprocate that respect. The Boks are not perfect, they still average the second most penalties in defence out of the teams left in the competition (6.8), but Erasmus feels his side have made strides in the right direction in terms of respect.

The South African went on to explain how the world champions have tweaked their game over the last year to become more well rounded in order to make the job easier for the referee.

“For us the first word is respect,” the 2019 World Cup winning coach said. “I think definitely we got it wrong in stages especially when we had the year off with Covid and we went into the Lions series. The levels of communication was really tough and was really, even when we played our 100th game against New Zealand we were in a bubble in Australia. World Rugby couldn’t be there and the Lions series they couldn’t be there because of Covid. So it was tough to get better and better communication and I guess on both sides it led to frustration.

“Last year I had a phone call with [former referee] Nigel Owens and I said ‘we really want to get this right, we don’t want people not to like us. That is not the reason for us, maybe sometimes having differences and doing things in a way just to get a response.’ We wanted to know how things worked and I must say what we learned from that conversations is that no matter if we are right the respect you show to the referee you will get back from that referee, even if he makes mistakes or you make mistakes. We also had to adapt our game a little bit. If you only rely on maul, it is difficult to referee a maul. If you only rely on a scrum, it’s difficult to referee a scrum. I’ll be honest with you, there was one tweet I tweeted especially after the France game [in 2022], I was quite honest and serious about it. We had to change our game to make it easier for referees. So it’s not always this [crunch] thing to work out who is or isn’t dominate. That there is also free flowing passes and open tries which was a really honest. Guys also worked hard on level change [on tackles].

“So yes no cards, I think we are fourth lowest for penalty count. We had to earn it back, we had to earn the respect back and I think it is showing at this stage that it works both ways.”