PETER BRUCE: Dear Rassie, please stop tweeting

OK, so let’s agree that that French try was a double movement and that Willie le Roux’s pass wasn’t forward. Let’s even agree that the Springboks bossed the French in Marseilles on Saturday night. Hell, down to 13 men and Pieter-Steph du Toit off for most of the game, what we watched was a miracle. The Boks were unbelievably physical; the relief of the French at the end was palpable.

Down a key player and 16-10 at halftime, we were going to be buried. Instead we outscored the French 16-14 in the second half. They won, but we won too. If this was an early run for the World Cup in France next year, the French should be very worried. They’re at the top of their game — No 2 in the world. We’re still getting our act together. We weren’t even playing our best team.

Whenever Lukhanyo Am is not playing, it’s not our best team.

We weren’t even playing people in their best positions. Damian Willemse is a brilliant fullback but an indifferent flyhalf at best. Thank heaven Cheslin Kolbe was back on the wing after being made to play fullback against the Irish a week earlier.

The selections were eccentric. A clearly in-form Evan Roos cannot get a start at No 8. Kwagga Smith, apart from thoughtlessly pushing Du Toit into the head-on-head clash with French centre Jonathan Danty, was a terrible choice to start. Why does Rassie Erasmus do this to us fans? (I know his friend, the physiotherapist Jacques Nienaber, is nominally the head coach, but when the first rugby team you’ve ever “coached” is the Springboks, you have to forgive a degree of disbelief.)

We didn’t even have a recognised kicker on the field. I know, I saw Faf de Klerk, Kolbe and Willemse nail all their kicks, but just because a gamble like that pays off doesn’t mean playing without a specialist place-kicker is a smart thing to do.

Still, all that aside, I’m an emotional fan. I was so proud of my team on Saturday and I normally take losses very badly.

And then Erasmus went and spoilt it all by doing something stupid like he did before. After a damaging year’s absence from the Springbok game because of a lengthy video criticising referee Nic Berry’s officiating in the first Test against the British & Irish Lions last year, he is back — the whiniest person on Twitter since Donald Trump lost the 2020 US election to Joe Biden.

On Sunday night SuperSport ran a lengthy hagiographic documentary on the Springbok director of rugby. Erasmus’s view of the world, you would have thought, is already well enough known. He’s an emotional guy who even when he was a teenager somehow knew racial discrimination was wrong. He cries. He shares his feelings. He doesn’t mind making mistakes. He says “fuck” a lot.

At one point in the film, after it discusses the comeback from the Springboks in 2018 when they found themselves down 24-3 to England after 15 minutes, Erasmus says, of his growth as a coach: “I will never be that asshole again. The relevant one. The correct one. It hurt my family, it hurt my future, it hurt my team, it hurt South Africa.”

Yet hardly had the players left the field on Saturday and he was being that asshole again. Being the relevant one, being the correct one. The ref, Wayne Barnes, with 101 rugby Tests under his belt, needed to be taught a lesson, just like Berry did.

But while I remember thinking, watching Erasmus’s takedown of Berry, how right he was to have done it, all I could think of now as eight whiny, sarcastic tweets criticising Barnes rolled off the Erasmus phone and onto Twitter was: “Please stop, this is just embarrassing.”

Of course referees make mistakes and the day may come when the technology and the TMO are consulted on all scores and infringements, but I don’t think it will improve rugby. It hasn’t improved soccer. On balance, the French were worthy winners, just as the Irish were the week before. Big rugby powers have found us out. We can be countered. Not even our shock tactics — playing without a kicker in Ireland and actually running the ball in France — seem to be enough. Still, we’re damned good. We are on tour and have so far lost to the two best teams in the world by a combined total of just seven points.

I can take Erasmus’s strange selections, but I don’t want him making a fool of the country on this Twitter account. It brings him, his team, the country and the game into disrepute. Perhaps SA Rugby might have a word and stop him commentating in any way on refereeing. Or would they be too scared?

There are other good coaches in South Africa — John Dobson at the Stormers and, what do you know, Jake White at the Bulls. But if Erasmus thinks its fine to go into a Test match without a recognised kicker then there’s no reason we shouldn’t go into a championship without an Erasmus.

Our chances of winning in France next year are really good. We have an embarrassment of talent and Erasmus needs to be recognised for his recognition of character and for the enormity of his transformative effect on rugby. He has made it a truly national game.

But can we please be grown up about losing? It happens. In cricket, the best batsmen don’t wait to be told to go when they’re clearly out. They walk. There are ways to discuss poor refereeing and Erasmus should try them. Nothing he is doing on social media makes his chances of winning the next game any easier.

In the Sunday documentary, former Springbok coach Nick Mallett recalls that “as soon as you get the Springbok job you start — and I accept this as a fault of my own — not listening to outside people and thinking you can sort it out yourself”. In other words, don’t be a windgat.

In Greek mythology, the gods are always easily angered and vengeful, their inner child always dominant. Erasmus, seriously good coach that he is, is not a god and he should stop trying to behave like one.