The Springboks head coach sat down in Baltimore with the series won 3-1, the trophy in the room and his 100th Test in charge behind him. He was asked whether his team were the better side. He said no, then explained who the winning was for.
Rassie Erasmus had just won a series 3-1 in front of the biggest crowd rugby union has drawn in North America. The question was whether South Africa were the better team.
“I wouldn’t say we were the better team,” he said.
That was the head coach of the back-to-back world champions, minutes after a 43-28 win at M&T Bank Stadium on Saturday 12 September had sealed the inaugural Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry title, six tries to four, in his 100th Test in charge. Not false modesty. Read the clock.
Rassie Erasmus says the margin is small. The clock agrees with him until the 72nd minute
“I wouldn’t say we were the better team [today]. At 60 minutes the game was still in the balance. We appreciate that we won but the margin between us and New Zealand is very small.”
Fifteen points and six tries to four say otherwise. Both numbers were built in the last eight minutes.
Ethan Blackadder scored on 64, Damian McKenzie converted from the touchline, and it was 29-21. One converted try from level with a quarter of an hour left. Then Kurt-Lee Arendse picked up a loose ball inside his own half on 72 and ran the length of the field, and Cameron Hanekom scored on 78 off a Will Jordan turnover. Fourteen points in six minutes, both from New Zealand ball. Beauden Barrett’s try on 80 was the last thing that happened.
SA Rugby magazine’s transcription of the same answer has Erasmus putting a time on it: “Up until the last 11 minutes, I wasn’t sure if we were going to win.”
The series backs him. New Zealand outscored South Africa across the first three Tests and still flew to Baltimore 2-1 down, because Soweto was won 29-24 with the All Blacks camped on the line. Four Tests, one comfortable scoreline, and that one only became comfortable with eight minutes left.
What the win does settle is the rankings. South Africa went to Baltimore at No.1, 2.43 points clear of New Zealand, having lost the top spot for a week after Ellis Park. Beating the No.2 side at a neutral venue only widens that gap when Monday’s update lands. Erasmus did not mention it. He mentioned who the ranking is for.
“I don’t know how they afford it, but it’s great”
The crowd was 68,173, a record for a rugby match in North America, past the Ireland v New Zealand Test at Soldier Field in 2016, and most of it was wearing green. That was the first thing Erasmus was asked about.
“It was awesome to see so many South Africans here; I don’t [know] how they afford it or how they got here, but it’s great. We appreciate the people who were here, but we don’t forget the people who were at home; the people in the farm or the boy in the township or the people in the shopping mall. That’s what drives us.”
Hold on to “afford”. Three weeks earlier, before the third Test, Erasmus had said he was not sure how many people in Soweto would be able to afford a ticket, with prices running from R1,650 to R4,000. He has now talked about ticket money after two Tests running, in opposite directions. In Soweto the worry was who could not get in. In Baltimore it was how so many did.
The list matters more than the crowd. Farm, township, shopping mall. Nobody in it bought a ticket.
“Obviously we want to win and that’s great for us as a team and that’s why we play rugby, but we want them to be happy.”
Siya Kolisi, sitting beside him after his 56th Test win as captain, drew the same line in fewer words: “The support is really special for us – that’s who we do it for; the people who can afford to come here and those who are at home.”
Kolisi also gave the only account from either camp of the nine minutes in the first half when Karl Dickson lost his link to the TMO and the game stood still.
“Because there was a long stoppage [for referee audio problems], we were still in the zone, but my goodness, but in that moment, you get to appreciate the crowd singing and enjoying the environment and hopefully we have made it special for them.”
Every other version of that stoppage is a complaint. His is the crowd. By the end of the night he was singing back at them.
Read also: Kolisi was asked what he would sing to celebrate, and sang it.
“I know we sometimes annoy other people around the world”
The line of the night came when the No.1 ranking came up.
“I know we sometimes annoy other people around the world for the way [we] go about things, or the angle we take on issues, but we really care the most about South African people. We enjoy the other people around the world, and we understand their opinions and love the banter, but there’s only one reason for us as a team and for us as a country, it’s for South Africa.”
SA Rugby magazine’s transcription is blunter: “I know sometimes we piss off other people all over the world with the way we play.” Either version does the job.
“The angle we take on issues” is doing the work in that sentence. This is the coach of the 7-1 bench, of a front-row swap that a Sky Sport panel debated banning, and the man who was offered the scrum vindication after Soweto and handed it straight back. Every one of those was an angle somebody outside South Africa objected to. He knows. He has just said it changes nothing.
The banter line is the softer half, and it is the half New Zealand will recognise. Erasmus had a beer with Dave Rennie after Ellis Park and boarded the same plane to Cape Town. Annoying people and enjoying them are not, in his telling, different jobs.
“We go hard against each other, but we get along off the field”
Both squads knelt together on the pitch after the whistle. Kolisi explained what it was.
“We came together to thank each other. We go hard against each other, but we get along off the field. The way the New Zealanders came to our country and embraced our country and the way they gave themselves to people in our country; we came together to thank them for that. It’s tough that one team has to win and one team has to lose but we know we are going to see each other again.”
The thank-you had a specific object. New Zealand spent the best part of a month in South Africa and played three Tests there, and Erasmus told SA Rugby magazine what that looked like from his side: “New Zealand were getting into the communities in South Africa, and the supporters got to see their heroes in the flesh.” He went further than his captain on what the series was. “One day when we’re old, we’ll say we played in 2026, in that first tour when the Greatest Rivalry started again.”
The trophy was built to be cut in half if the series had finished 2-2. It left Baltimore whole.
This was Erasmus’s 100th Test in charge. The first was also in the United States: Washington DC, 2 June 2018, a 22-20 defeat by Wales with a side full of new caps. A hundred Tests later the Springboks are back-to-back world champions, No.1 in the world and holders of a trophy nobody had lifted before Saturday, and the coach’s reaction was to say the margin is small and the reason is the boy in the township.
Which is the angle. He told you it annoys people.
Frequently asked
What did Rassie Erasmus say after the Springboks beat the All Blacks in Baltimore?
That he would not call South Africa the better team, that the game was still in the balance at 60 minutes and the margin between the sides is very small. He said the team plays for the people at home, on the farm, in the township and in the shopping mall, and that he knows the Springboks annoy people around the world for the way they go about things.
Did the Springboks win Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry?
Yes. South Africa lost the first Test at Ellis Park and won the next three, in Cape Town, in Soweto by 29-24, and in Baltimore by 43-28, to take the inaugural series 3-1. The trophy was designed to be split in two if the series had finished level.
What was the attendance for the Springboks v All Blacks Test in Baltimore?
68,173 at M&T Bank Stadium, the largest crowd for a rugby match in North America, beating the record set when Ireland beat New Zealand at Soldier Field in Chicago in 2016.
Read next:
– Springboks player ratings from Baltimore, where a 9.5 went to a scrum-half making his first start of the series.
– All Blacks player ratings from Baltimore, where the returning fly-half gets the lowest mark in black.
– The Rassie Erasmus greatest-coach case, and the stat that belongs to Steve Hansen. A hundred Tests in, the argument has new numbers.
Your turn: is Rassie Erasmus right that the margin is small?
Two ways to read 3-1. Either four tight Tests and one eight-minute burst mean the gap is exactly as small as Erasmus says, and the series turned on which side held its nerve in the last quarter. Or three wins in a row, six tries to four in the decider and the No.1 ranking mean the coach is being polite. One of those is analysis. The other is manners. Which was it? Settle it below.
