Yellow cards: Rassie not worried about discipline in Bok team

Despite five yellow cards and a red card being handed out to his team in their last two Test matches, Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus isn’t in the least concerned about discipline in the team.

The Boks were shown two yellow cards and a red in their 64-21 win against Portugal in Bloemfontein towards the end of July and again last weekend in Brisbane, in their 33-7 win against the Wallabies in the Rugby Championship opener, the Boks were shown a further three yellow cards.

Erasmus said earlier this week the majority of the infringements which resulted in his players being sin-binned were down to poor technique in most cases, rather than anything resembling “thuggery”.

Technique and over-eagerness

“Our discipline is up to what we want,” said Erasmus, ahead of Saturday’s second match on tour against the Wallabies in Perth.

“We didn’t concede the most penalties … the yellow cards we got were for continuous infringement, a slap down, reckless play … not one of them was for a lack of discipline. It was more technique and over-eagerness, but yes, we don’t want to concede yellow cards,” said Erasmus.

“Andre Esterhuizen (who got a red card for head contact in the Portugal match) got banned, we accept that, he got it wrong. That was a rugby incident that was reckless and a technique thing.”

Experienced inside centre Esterhuizen was banned for four matches and missed the trip to Australia, but he is back in training with the Sharks in Durban and could feature again for the Boks when the All Blacks visit South Africa later this month.

‘Hopeful we’ll get it right’

In last week’s match in Brisbane, the Boks conceded 12 penalties to the 15 by the Wallabies, while in the match against Portugal, they conceded nine penalties to eight.

“I’m comfortable to say that none of us do things on purpose. If it was that way we wouldn’t pick them (players). We don’t like cards, we won’t win big Tests with cards,” said Erasmus, who this season has added former Test referee Jaco Peyper to his management team as a laws and discipline advisor.

“But it (the recent number of cards dished out to his team) is something we have mentioned and worked on. If they were malicious cards … I wouldn’t say thuggery … then it would be a helluva concern, but they’ve been more technical things.

“We’ve addressed it and I’m hopeful we’ll get it right this weekend.”