Boks next up against ‘desperate’ England, says Erasmus

Rassie Erasmus has warned his South Africa side they will be up against a “desperate” England when the world champions continue their November campaign at Twickenham on Saturday.

The Springboks returned to the top of the world rankings with a hard-fought 32-15 win over Scotland at Murrayfield on Sunday.

That success came the day after England’s dramatic 42-37 loss to Australia, their second straight defeat of the Autumn Nations Series after a 24-22 reverse against New Zealand.

“Twickenham will be a different kind of pressure,” said Springboks boss Erasmus. “It’s a very desperate team, who have lost two matches now.

“Australia might not be up there rankings-wise, but we know where they’re going with (coach) Joe Schmidt.

“England is now that desperate team who almost beat New Zealand, almost beat Australia, so it’s going to be a very tough game.”

Bok ‘Bomb Squad’

It will be South Africa’s first match against Steve Borthwick’s England since their dramatic 16-15 World Cup semi-final win in France last year.

South Africa had seven forwards among eight replacements against Scotland in a bid to keep their first-choice pack fresh for this Saturday’s game, with the Springboks having a shorter gap between Tests than England.

Franco Mostert came off at half-time before Erasmus sent on six more forwards five minutes after the break in Ox Nche, Malcolm Marx, Vincent Koch, Pieter-Steph du Toit, regular captain Siya Kolisi and Jasper Wiese.

The impact of South Africa’s latest ‘Bomb Squad’ proved telling, with the Springboks winning several scrum penalties before Wiese sealed victory with a pushover try in the final play of the game.

“We rested two packs for a reason, because we want the pack of forwards to be fresh for the six-day turnaround,” said Erasmus.

South Africa outscored Scotland four tries to nil in a match they won by 17 points.

Nevertheless, veteran lock Eben Etzebeth, who marked his elevation to the captaincy with a man-of-the-match display, insisted there was room for improvement.

‘Not proud’

“We obviously set high standards, we drive it within the team,” said Etzebeth, the lone Springbok forward to play the full 80 minutes on Sunday.

“We want to keep on performing and we know now and again there is going to be a performance which we are not that proud of.”

It was South Africa’s second straight win over Scotland without conceding a try after an 18-3 victory at the World Cup, with Dark Blues playmaker Finn Russell restricted to five penalties on Sunday.

“I know the scoreboard maybe doesn’t tell the whole story,” said Erasmus.

“But probably we can be very proud of playing against Finn Russell in two games and not giving a try away. I think that’s really hard to do.”

Scotland were 19-9 behind at half-time following two tries by Makazole Mapimpi and one from Thomas du Toit after home lock Scott Cummings was shown a 20-minute red card for a dangerous neck roll.

But they closed to within four points before the Springboks pulled clear.

‘Worked hard’

“I thought it was one of our best performances of the last few seasons,” said Scotland coach Gregor Townsend, who insisted Cummings’s red was “very harsh”.

“A performance like that, to go up against the world champions, you’ve got to bring your own physicality and match their physicality,” he added. “You’ve got to work as hard as you’ve ever worked and I felt our players did that.

“The question about not scoring tries, that’s a valid one, but I felt we had enough pressure and positions to score more points.”