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Siya Kolisi and Rassie Erasmus assess England's future

Maro Itoje and Luke Cowan-Dickie of England/ PA

South Africa captain Siya Kolisi has assured England that it will “come right for them,” saying the double world champions have been through a similar period.

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Kolisi led his side to a hard-fought 20-29 victory over England at Twickenham’s Allianz Stadium on Saturday, but it was not necessarily a match that looked like the world number ones playing the seventh-ranked team in the world who have won one of their last seven matches.

Steve Borthwick’s side looked promising at times, but ultimately did not have enough in the final 20 minutes of the match, which has been the case all November.

Video Spacer

Steve Borthwick and Jamie George react to loss against Springboks

Video Spacer

Steve Borthwick and Jamie George react to loss against Springboks

But Kolisi offered the struggling outfit some encouragement after the match, insisting that they should continue what they are doing.

Prior to his first match as captain – against England in 2018 – the Springboks had only won three of their previous nine Test matches, including a 57-0 loss to the All Blacks. The shellacking at the hands of New Zealand aside, there were some results that didn’t look too dissimilar to England’s now. Two two-point defeats, one loss by a single point and two draws came before they turned a corner.

Fixture
Internationals
England
59 - 14
Full-time
Japan
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That means Kolisi is well-qualified to offer these words of hope to England, who will look to arrest their losing streak against Japan on Sunday.

“We’ve been through this period as well,” the double World Cup-winning captain said. “If you give up, you’re never going to make it out of it. You’ve just got to keep on going. It’s tough, it’s really tough, but it really helped us and pulled us together as a group. We had certain goals and we reached those goals.

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“The motivation comes from within us. We don’t look for outside motivation.

“It will come right for them as long as they just keep on going.”

Head coach Rassie Erasmus was in agreement with his captain, who took the opportunity post-match to explain his comments about Borthwick being “under pressure” before their meeting in London.

“I’m still nervous that my words will get twisted in a headline or something like that, so I would like to explain the whole thing,” Erasmus said.

“Coaches will say ‘he’s under pressure’ with Borthwick, but I’d just like to say that we’ve been there. What you normally do then is you fall back to what you know is a go-to and you know work. We had a good feeling that he would probably go back to Freddie Steward.

“I think with this team, they’ve had three southern hemisphere teams now and took them close to the last 10 minutes. I think if they keep what they’re doing… We found it tough to break them down.”

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Comments

1 Comment
T
Td 21 days ago

I totally agree with both Siya and Rassie.

England needs a few tweaks and you only ever learn by your mistakes. To say that, after the losses they have suffered with small margins, they are going backwards, is ingoring the fact that they lost against very good teams whom all have had to face the dilemma. To the contrary, it means they are really close to the winning formula.

They only have to work on 15 man defence. They are very good at the forwards defensive game. Their attack looks impressive with Marcus as their playmaker. They need to find the right centre pairing. That was key to the Boks, Kiwis, Ireland and even France.

They will get there.

Firing Borthwick will put them back and they will never get there before 2027. They need to get a similar defence coach as Felix J. He was a huge loss to the potential that England has. The missing link. His departure was the single biggest set-back for their potential.

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JW 1 hour ago
'It doesn’t make sense for New Zealand to deny itself access to world-class players'

There are a couple of inadequacies in this articles points as well.


First

Robertson, in what he has said publicly, is building his argument for change as a means to close the gap that is increasing between the All Blacks and South Africa.

Based on recent performances, the All Blacks are better than the Springboks.


Second

Both games saw the All Blacks lead coming into the last 30 minutes, only for the momentum to shift dramatically once the two sides emptied their respective benches.

The failings of the second half were game plan related, they happened regardless of whether the bench had yet (play got worse very early in the half, even in the first half) been used or not.


And third

Robertson’s view is that because the Boks don’t lose access to their experienced players when they head offshore, it gives them an advantage

Didn't Razor have the most experienced team all year?


Also

“Sam Cane and Ardie Savea with Wallace Siti, what a balance that is.

This is part of Razor's problem. That's a terrible balance. You instead want something like Sam Cane, Hoskins Sotutu, Wallace Sititi. Or Ardie Savea, Sititi, Scott Barrett. Dalton Papaili'i, Savea, Finau. That is balance, not two old struggling to keep up players and an absolute rookie.

It has changed. Not many go north, more go to Japan, so how do we get the balance right to ensure that players who have given loyalty, longevity and who are still playing well

Experience is a priceless commodity in international rugby and New Zealand has a system where it throws away players precisely when they are at their most valuable.

You mean how do we take advantage of this new environment, because nothing has effectively changed has it. It's simply Japan now instead of Europe. What's it going to be like in the future, how is the new American league going to change things?


Mo'unga is the only real valid reason for debating change, but what's far more important is the wide discussion happening that's taking the whole game into account. The current modem throws players away because they decided to go with a 5 team model rather than a 12 or 14 team model. Players have to be asked to leave at the point were we know they aren't going to be All Blacks, when they are playing their best rugby, reached their peak. In order to reset, and see if the next guy coming through can improve on the 'peak' of the last guy. Of course it's going to take years before they even reach the departing players standards, let alone see if they can pass them.


What if there can be a change that enables New Zealand to have a model were players like Jamison Gibson-Park, James Lowe, Bundee Aki, Chandler Cunningham-South, Ethan Roots, Warner Dearns are All Blacks that make their experienced and youth developemnt the envy of the World. That is the discussion that really needs to be had, not how easy it is to allow Mo'unga to play again. That's how the All Blacks end up winning 3 World Cups in a row.

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