Rassie’s tweeting leaves Boks with a target on their backs

Rightly or wrongly, Rassie Erasmus and by extension SA Rugby and the Springboks have agitated World Rugby, our supposed big brother, and for the life of me, I don’t understand why.

Also, by tweeting his unhappiness with things that have gone wrong for the Boks, be they by the team’s own doing or refereeing errors, Erasmus has put the spotlight on himself, the Boks and SA Rugby, and it is a ‘battle’ he is not going to win.

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Erasmus has now been suspended for two matches, but what will the long-term impact be on the Boks when they play?

Yes, decisions have gone against the Boks, as they do for all teams, but the reality is the more these “errors” are pointed out in public, the more big brother doesn’t like it. And time and again World Rugby will flex their power because they have bigger muscles and far more clout.

Erasmus might have reasons to be unhappy, but rugby is a game that has many laws, many of which are open to interpretation, so it is a fight the SA rugby director is not going to win.

Added no value

And he should be addressing his concerns in another way, in the channels that are there for the coaches.

Erasmus’ intentions are probably good — or he is simply trying to deflect from the Boks’ inconsistent results under Jacques Nienaber — but he has not added any value to the Boks by tweeting his concerns. The Boks will end up with a big target on their backs and that is not good, or right, but it is what will now probably happen.

How very unfortunate!

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And now, ahead of the Test against Italy in Genoa today, the pressure is all of a sudden on the 23 chosen men to help restore the Boks’ dignity and reputation. That’s not fair.

And what a challenge awaits. Italy will be pumped up after beating Australia last week and they’ll believe they can record a second win against the Boks, the only other victory for them against the South Africans coming in 2016.

Italy favourites

I feel pretty confident in saying it will be the Italian players today, and not the Boks, who’ll be floating on adrenaline and confidence and if they were to pull off a win I wouldn’t at all be surprised.

On any other weekend, the Bok guys coming into the mix to face a “smaller team” like Italy would be champing at the bit to stake a claim for the next weekend’s Test, but today they’re under pressure to almost save the tour and win over supporters, which adds to the pressure on them.

They shouldn’t be the ones having to make right what Erasmus and the ones who played in Dublin and Marseille got wrong.

It’s going to be a big 80 minutes, with many eyes on the action for a number of different reasons.

I still think it’s a really good Bok team, but my hope is that they don’t get caught up in the pressure and what’s at stake and try too hard to rectify what has gone down in the last two weeks.

It would be best if they could put all that behind them and play with freedom and properly show what they can do.