DUBLIN — There’s a thin line dividing love and respect with frustration and desperation to win when it comes to Rassie Erasmus’ relationship with Ireland.
Though the Springboks’ supremo has been at pains to dismiss any notion he’s part of this week’s subplot leading up to Ireland-South Africa, the relationship between him and the Aviva Stadium is an inescapable crux of the narrative when these teams meet.
Winning in Dublin remains one of the last unconquered frontiers for Erasmus’ Springboks. Since the 2023 World Cup win, they’ve won at Twickenham, the Principality Stadium and Murrayfield. They beat France in Paris this year with 14 men for 42 minutes.
They won back-to-back Tests against the Wallabies in Australia in 2024, and inflicted a record defeat on the All Blacks in Wellington this September. They stuck 67 points on Argentina. That’s aside from the crowning achievements of the Erasmus era: winning two men’s Rugby World Cups, a British & Irish Lions series and the past two Rugby Championship crowns.
Rassie Erasmus has a love-hate relationship with Irish rugby. Piaras à MÃdheach/Sportsfile via Getty Images
But beating Ireland in Dublin? Well you have to go back 13 years to when Heyneke Meyer was in charge for the last time South Africa managed that.
This match will define their season. A win on Saturday would make it 11 out of 13 Test matches for the Boks with Wales in Cardiff to come. “It’ll be great season if that happens,” Erasmus said.
All is well. But a defeat? The whole perspective shifts. The detractors will remember how the Boks lost in Johannesburg to the Wallabies. And they’ll remember a freezing November afternoon in Dublin.
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“Then it’s probably not a great season. We still have Wales to play, but I think it’ll define us in a way. We’ll try and keep our own reality,” he added. In short: it’s a pivotal match.
The Boks have come close against Ireland, but four times out of their last five meetings, they’ve been beaten. “We always came back the last couple of minutes but we never got the nail in the coffin to actually secure the wins,” Erasmus told Supersport this week. “Once out of five we got it right, but the challenge now is to do it one more time against our old foes.”
The first of the quintet was in November 2017 when Erasmus’ Boks lost 38-3 to Ireland. Five years later the two teams met again in Dublin, and Ireland won 19-16. Then came the meeting in Sept. 2023 at the Rugby World Cup in Paris. It was a monumental clash, Ireland winning 13-8. At full-time, Erasmus stood on the pitch in the Stade de France as the Cranberries’ “Zombie” rang out, the place a sea of green as delighted Irish fans ripped vocal chords booming the anthem out.
A win at the Aviva Stadium is one of the last boxes to tick for this Springboks outfit. Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
Erasmus soaked it all in, and used that pain to give his team an almighty dressing down. From there the Boks strung together a World Cup-winning campaign. In July 2024, Ireland headed to South Africa for a two-Test series. The Boks won in Pretoria 27-20 but a week later, Ciaran Frawley’s last-gasp drop-goal secured Ireland a 24-22 win, consigning the Boks to a defeat in Durban for the first time since 2016.
Erasmus can recall the pivotal moments in the defeats, as if they’re tattooed to the front of his mind. “If you look at the scores at the World Cup; the maul at the end, they kept us up there. First maul in 2022 look at Josh van der Flier, he just kept his foot out of touch but they scored a vital try. If you look at Durban — the drop-goal in the last minute. We weren’t far off, we weren’t outplayed, but we’ve been underdone.
“There’s a combination of things, the technicality in which they sort out the physical area, sometimes we get frustrated with that and we don’t handle it well.”
So that’s the tale of the tape, but also bubbling away when it comes to the Boks, Erasmus and Ireland is the coach’s spell at Munster just under a decade ago. In April 2016, Erasmus was appointed director of rugby at the Irish club on a three-year deal. He took charge that summer, working with Munster great Anthony “Axel” Foley as head coach.
In October, tragedy struck. Foley died in his sleep while the team were preparing for a Champions Cup match with Racing 92.
Erasmus led the grief-stricken province to the PRO12 final that season, where they lost to Scarlets, and also to the Champions Cup semifinal, where they fell to Saracens. Both matches were at the Aviva Stadium. By June 2017, he’d accepted the job as Springboks’ director of rugby, taking Jacques Nienaber with him. The pair left in November 2017.
Ireland beat South Africa in the 2023 World Cup group stage Christian Liewig – Corbis/Getty Images
The province were understanding, but also clearly upset at losing two vital leaders. The fans were aggrieved at how Erasmus said he was staying in Munster only to then head home. Time heals those frustrations, but that spell has left an indelible mark on Erasmus’ philosophy.
“I think you talk to most of the Irish coaches and people, maybe not to pundits so much, I don’t think they enjoy me so much, but I think if you talk to the players, I’ve got no two ways about it that the things that I learned here in Ireland was something that I want to take this back to South Africa, and I think I’ve been quoted many times on that,” Erasmus said on Thursday in Dublin.
“So, I can’t say that’s personal. It’s more the respect that I’ve learned here for the discipline and how they do things.”
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That has contributed to his remarkable spell in charge of the Boks, sweeping all before them at the past two World Cups. But though there are the personal ties, and a win in Dublin being the last thing to tick off Erasmus’ Springboks CV, he’s at pains to distance himself from becoming a talking point leading into Saturday.
“You wanna tick off something that you’ve never done. I’d be lying if I said that,” Erasmus said.
Ireland beat the Springboks in Durban in 2024. Brendan Moran/Sportsfile via Getty Images
“It’s not revenge, it’s a nice competitive environment with a team that’s always been over the last two years in numbers one to four in the world. There’s excitement — it’s something we haven’t done — let’s go and try and do it. If it’s about me then we’re talking about the wrong things. It’s not personal.”
Ireland are fired up. “There’s definitely a rivalry there,” Ireland captain Caelan Doris said Friday. “There’s a strong understanding of how we both want to play the game. We’ve had some good results. They’ve beaten us over there as well in 2024. Yeah there’s a lot on the line.”
A win in the Aviva Stadium remains the Boks’ nemesis.
Erasmus managed one win on Irish soil in his Boks playing days, at the old Lansdowne Road in 1998. The new stadium on the old ground’s patch remains somewhere he’s yet to conquer. That’s the challenge. But you feel that regardless of how things play out at a freezing Aviva Stadium on Saturday, despite his attempts to stay out of the pre-match discussions, Erasmus’ name will be inevitably intertwined with the narrative of whatever plays out.
