DUBLIN — When it comes to Rassie Erasmus’ relationship with Ireland, there is a fine line between love and respect, frustration and hopelessness for victory.
The Springbok supremo is struggling to dispel the idea that he is part of this week’s subplot leading up to Ireland v South Africa, but his association with the Aviva Stadium is the unavoidable crux of the narrative when the two teams meet.
Victory in Dublin is one of the last frontiers yet to be conquered for Erasmus’s Springboks. Since winning the World Cup in 2023, they have won at Twickenham, the Principality Stadium and Murrayfield. This year in Paris, they beat France with 14 players for 42 minutes.
In 2024, they won back-to-back test matches against the Wallabies in Australia, and suffered a record defeat to the All Blacks in Wellington in September this year. They beat Argentina with 67 points. That’s apart from his impressive Erasmus achievements, which included two Men’s Rugby World Cup wins, a British & Irish Lions Series win and the last two Rugby Championships.
But beating Ireland in Dublin? Well, you have to go back 13 years to the last time South Africa managed it, when Heineke Meyer was in charge.
This game will decide their season. Victory on Saturday means the Boks will play in 11 of the 13 Test matches against Wales in Cardiff. “If that happens, it will be a great season,” Erasmus said.
all is well. But defeat? The whole perspective changes. Critics will recall that the Boks lost to the Wallabies in Johannesburg. And they will remember that freezing November afternoon in Dublin.
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“Then it probably won’t be a great season. We still have a game against Wales left, but I think it will define us in a way. We’ll try to keep ourselves real.” In short, it’s a very important match.
The Boks came very close against Ireland, but have lost four of their last five meetings. “We always came back in the last minutes, but we couldn’t really put in the nail in the coffin to secure the win,” Erasmus told SuperSport this week. “We’ve had success one out of five times, but now the challenge is to make it one more time against our arch-rival.”
The quintet’s first game was in November 2017, when Erasmus’ Boks lost 38-3 to Ireland. Five years later, the teams met again in Dublin, with Ireland winning 19-16. Then came the chance to meet at the Rugby World Cup to be held in Paris in September 2023. It was a monumental game, with Ireland winning 13-8. Erasmus took to the pitch at the Stade de France to the sound of The Cranberries’ “Zombie,” and the stadium became a sea of green as jubilant Irish fans tore their vocal cords into the national anthem.
Erasmus soaked it all up and used the pain to give his team an almighty dressing down. From there, the Boks put together a World Cup-winning campaign. In July 2024, Ireland headed to South Africa for a two-Test series. The Boks won 27-20 in Pretoria, but a week later the Boks suffered their first defeat since 2016 in Durban when Ciaran Frawley’s last-minute drop goal ensured Ireland won 24-22.
Erasmus can recall the pivotal moments of the defeat as if they were etched into his mind. “If you look at the World Cup scores, in the last maul, they kept us there. Look at Josh van der Flier in the first maul of 2022. He just didn’t touch his feet, but they scored an important try. You look at Durban, a last-minute drop goal. We weren’t far, we weren’t outmatched, but we were behind.”
“There are a lot of different things coming together, and there are technical issues organizing the physical realm, and sometimes we get frustrated with it and don’t deal with it very well.”
This is about the tape, but when it comes to the Boks, Erasmus and Ireland, the coach’s curse at Munster less than 10 years ago was also talked about. In April 2016, Erasmus was appointed director of rugby at the Irish club on a three-year contract. He took charge that summer, working alongside Munster great Anthony ‘Axel’ Foley as head coach.
In October, tragedy struck. Foley died in his sleep while the team was preparing for a Champions Cup match against Racing 92.
Erasmus led a grief-stricken state to the PRO12 final that season, where they lost to Scarlets and also lost to Saracens in the Champions Cup semi-final. Both matches were played at the Aviva Stadium. By June 2017, he had accepted the job as Springbok director of rugby, bringing with him Jack Nienaber. The two left in November 2017.
The state was understanding, but visibly shaken by the loss of two key leaders. Fans were furious when Erasmus said he would only stay in Munster and then return home. Time heals that frustration, but the spell left an indelible mark on Erasmus’s philosophy.
“I think I’ve talked to most of the Irish coaches and the people. I might not have talked to the pundits as much. I don’t think they’ve really enjoyed me, but if you talk to the players, I think it’s inevitable that they want to take what they’ve learned here in Ireland back to South Africa. I think that’s been quoted a number of times,” Erasmus said in Dublin on Thursday.
“So I can’t say it’s personal. Rather, it’s the discipline I learned here and respect for the way they do things.”
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This has contributed to his great performance as a Bok representative, leading to overwhelming victories over the Boks in the past two World Cups. But despite the personal ties and the victory in Dublin being the last tick to tick off Erasmus’ Springbok CV, he is struggling to distance himself from the headlines heading into Saturday.
“I guess he wants to do something he’s never done before. I’d be lying if I said that,” Erasmus said.
“This is not revenge. It’s a great competitive environment with a team that has been consistently No. 1 to No. 4 in the world for the past two years. I’m excited. This is something we’ve never done. Let’s go and do it. If it’s about me, we’re talking about the wrong thing. It’s not personal.”
Ireland is in high spirits. “There’s definitely a rivalry there,” Ireland captain Caelan Doris said Friday. “We have a good understanding of how we both want to play. We have had some good results. They beat us over there in 2024 as well. So, a lot is at stake.”
Victory at the Aviva Stadium remains the Boks’ arch-rival.
Erasmus won one game on Irish soil during his time with the Boks, at the old Lansdowne Road in 1998. The new stadium, located on a corner of the old ground, remains in the area he has yet to conquer. That’s the challenge. But you have the feeling that whatever happens at the frigid Aviva Stadium on Saturday, Erasmus’ name will inevitably be entangled in the narrative no matter what happens, despite his efforts to stay out of pre-match discussions.