Bok coach Erasmus hints at changes for second Test against Italy

Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus has hinted he will ring a number of changes for the second match of the Incoming Test Series against Italy at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Gqeberha on Saturday. 

South Africa started their international season with a 42-24 win over the Azzurri at a vibey Loftus but Erasmus was not entirely satisfied because they did not put their visitors to the sword. 

The Boks scored six tries to Italy’s three but couldn’t build on a commanding 28-3 halftime lead and Erasmus expressed his frustration with the team’s performance in front of a good-sized crowd in Pretoria. 

South Africa’s tries were scored by Jesse Kriel, Morne van den Berg (2), Kurt-Lee Arendse, Vincent Koch and Marco van Staden while Italy responded through Manuel Zuliani, Pablo Dimcheff and Niccolo Cannone. 

“Internally we have about 13 or 14 players that we said we will give a run to this week. We will build the bench or starting line-up around those guys and some of them we have already announced internally,” Erasmus said after the match.

“Some of them will move to the bench and some of the standouts from this match might start again. We won’t discard some of the guys who played in this match, it is just the makeup of the team. 

“Italy threw a lot of physicality at us. Normally you think a team that makes 120 tackles in the first half would break in the second half. They are a team that is fit and passionate.” 

Erasmus said the team the Boks will field on Saturday must be imposing and go the distance. 

“We have to make sure the team we are going to pick this week is not just a team that can go 50 or 60 minutes but it must be a team that can go for 80 minutes.

“The other nine guys that we must pick will either be in the starting line-up, someone like Sacha [Feinberg-Mngomezulu] will be back. We will see who is the other nine, maybe play a guy like Cobus [Reinach] or Grant [Williams]. 

“We will just have to fine-tune now and take stock of injuries. I see Damian de Allende has some sort of a hamstring [problem] but there are no serious injuries to report on, it is just niggles.”

Though he was not happy with the performance, Erasmus accepted the result.

“I guess it’s a positive we scored six tries, but we are frustrated. I didn’t pick up in the week this was the way we were going to perform but it’s all fixable — but it’s definitely frustrating. 

“It was a very frustrating game. We knew they would man up, and they certainly manned up in most departments — scrums, mauling, defence, attack. It was a proper Test match. 

 “When we were 28-3 up and we scored that try that was disallowed for obstruction, I thought we might have them, but then we lost some momentum. I don’t think we have too many excuses and it certainly makes the selection for next week interesting — they could easily have come back into it at the end.

“They performed really well — we definitely tried to impose our game on them and they didn’t allow it. The frustration was not only about not dominating, but also that the game was stop-start, stop-start. It felt like we didn’t get any intensity in the second half. 

“The positives are that we won, that we scored tries — even with a maul that didn’t function, even with a breakdown that wasn’t great on attack, even with a counterattack that wasn’t awesome, we still scored six tries.”