Morgan Bolton
There was an audible gasp from the Loftus Versfeld faithful on Saturday night when Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus rang the changes in the second half.
With 30 minutes left to play and the Boks leading by the now-infamous 13-8 scoreline – the margin of defeat suffered to the Irish at the Rugby World Cup last year – the coach made the call and substituted his entire starting tight five, and his captain.
In one decisive action, the Bok coach replaced Ox Nche, Bongi Mbonambi, Frans Malherbe, Eben Etzebeth, Franco Mostert and Siya Kolisi for Gerhard Steenekamp, Malcolm Marx, Vincent Koch, Salmaan Moerat, RG Snyman and Marco van Staden. Some 16 minutes later, the combined arms of the new pack ravaged their Ireland counterparts, shoving their opponents into oblivion in one of the most beautiful sights in rugby to record a penalty try that secured the 27-20 victory.
After the first Test, Erasmus explained the thinking behind the risky decision of unleashing the entire Bomb Squad in one go.
“I thought that starting pack was brilliant, and I thought Siya (Kolisi) was brilliant,” he said, after noting the struggles of the Boks at line-out time.
“Normally, Ireland is a team that when your tight forwards get tired – as we saw with the last two tries – they really exploit that. The last pushover scrum is a testament that slow poison does work.
“When they got those injuries with their hooker and so on, I really thought that it would lift the pack. We could, maybe, have left Siya to play on a bit more but then we also want to grow the squad.
“We want to build squad depth, while we are trying to win,” he concluded, while mentioning the input of Moerat and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu.
“There is a strategy behind it, and a plan,” Pieter-Steph du Toit, who finished the clash as skipper, said afterwards. “(On Saturday) it worked for us but it definitely can go against you as well. The coaches did their research.”
Although Kurt-Lee Arendse’s try was a solid example of what the Boks are attempting to engineer, there is no doubt – reinvigorated by the forward replacements – that the penalty try in the 75th minute was the score of the match.
Arendse was accommodating of the notion, saying with a wry smile: “At the end of the day, it is a team effort.
“We all work hard to contribute and, as Pieter said, buy into the plan. It doesn’t matter who scores as long as at the end of the day, we all win,” he concluded.