MARK KEOHANE | The true ‘World Rugby Coach of the Year’ needs no applause

Rassie Erasmus doesn’t need World Rugby’s Coach of the Year award to validate the most remarkable two-season run of any coach in Springbok history.

Erasmus has never coached for applause, votes or the approval of administrators in blazers. His approval comes from his players, and his validation comes every Saturday when the Springboks win Test matches they supposedly shouldn’t, with squads the critics say are too inexperienced, too experimental or too transitional.

In the past two seasons, Erasmus has won 22 from 26 Tests and one more win, against Wales, will ensure 23 from 27 wins, which translates to 85 percent. Add the international season opening 54-7 win against the Barbarians in Cape Town, and it would be 24 from 28 since the Boks won the 2023 Rugby World Cup final against the All Blacks in Paris, France, and defended the title they won in Japan in 2019.

Erasmus’s Boks have beaten every nation they have played away from home: the All Blacks, the Wallabies, France, Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, Italy and Argentina. This is more a study in sustained excellence than an impressive Test coaching record.

Yet he is somehow not the World Rugby Coach of the Year.

Erasmus’s accolades come from within the squad, in the way the senior players fight as if they are on debut, and the manner in which the newbies have flourished as if they have played 50 Tests.

Erasmus, as I know him, won’t be losing any sleep over World Rugby’s insistence to ignore his achievements because he knows they can’t ignore what he, captain Siya Kolisi and the Boks have done internationally since winning the 2019 Rugby World Cup title.

Erasmus’s accolades come from within the squad, in the way the senior players fight as if they are on debut, and the manner in which the newbies have flourished as if they have played 50 Tests.

Erasmus is defined by his players’ desire, refusal to be beaten and ability to find a way to win.

This Saturday’s Test match 23 emphasises everything that is golden about Erasmus’s selections, innovation and seamless changing of the guard, from one Test to another.

The Test falls outside World Rugby’s release window, which means Erasmus is without a dozen frontline World Cup winners, but Erasmus has still picked a match 23 good enough to win a World Cup final if it were being played on Saturday.

Only three starters from the 2023 World Cup final will start against Wales: Damian Willemse, Damian de Allende, and King Kolisi. Everything else has been reassembled by design, even if Saturday’s circumstances would have some thinking desperation.

Ethan Hooker has been fast-tracked with the confidence of a coach who values temperament over age and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu all season has been entrusted with responsibility usually reserved for Test centurions.

In the tight five, where few coaches are prepared to tamper, Erasmus refuses to be held to a stereotype in who he starts, who finishes and who gets what game time. He makes his decisions in real time.

Erasmus trusts youth, if he sees certain Test qualities, but the senior players remain central to the strength of his squad.

Erasmus hasn’t protected reputations, but he has not prematurely ended any because of father time. Bongi Mbonambi, as one example, is there because of Erasmus’s belief he can find the form of 2023, and not because of sentiment.

Double World Cup winners Handré Pollard and Eben Etzebeth have been managed carefully, with the end goal the 2027 World Cup in Australia, and veteran Cobus Reinach has played the biggest minutes in the biggest matches and delivered his best Test season.

Grant Williams, at scrumhalf, has prospered, whether starting, finishing or playing on the wing, and Erasmus has not dismissed a return in 2026 for World Cup winner Faf de Klerk.

Erasmus selects by purpose and beyond the immediacy of any week’s one-off Test match.

Wales, missing 13 players from the side beaten 52-26 by the All Blacks a week ago, will be brave and spirited, but they will be outclassed and outpowered against the world championship and No 1 team in the sport.