RUCK N ROLL
GAVIN RICH: Boks so-so in Rassie’s first year, but claimed status as Kiwis’ biggest threat
Sunday’s final day of the Cape Town Sevens brought the curtain down on the SA rugby year but it isn’t quite over for Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus, who will submit to a performance review from his bosses this week as his final order of business for 2018. How you view Erasmus’s first year needs to be placed in the context of the bigger picture. The Boks didn’t set the world alight in his first year, and there isn’t much you can say about a 50% success rate that Erasmus has not said himself: it is a pass mark, but only just. Perhaps the question that should be asked before you decide whether the Boks have progressed in 2018 is how much more confident you are now that they could beat the world’s best team, New Zealand, at the 2019 World Cup. The All Blacks have been in experimental mode and their workload, including their travel schedule, in a non-World Cup year was a big contributing factor to their flat performances in the November internationals in the northern hemisphere. The extr...
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