Rassie Erasmus: the rugby revolutionary

Perhaps the greatest of Rassie Erasmus’s contributions as Springbok coach has been to establish that rugby is not a 15-man game, though the laws still say it is. This simple insight has been revolutionary. It has changed the way the game is played — or the way South Africa plays the game, anyway, while other rugby nations strive to understand and so catch up.

If there is one man with whom just about every CEO in South Africa would like to have lunch, it is Erasmus. There is so much to learn from a man who has made South Africa feel more united and happy than anyone has since Nelson Mandela; who has turned racial transformation from an intractable obstacle into a non-issue; who has shown how to turn strategy into consistent and successful execution; and who is able to get talented people to relax and be themselves, but also to play as a team and deliver their best under extreme pressure. 

To understand where Erasmus has taken the game of rugby, we have to understand where it was coming from.

The first rugby international was a 20-a-side match in 1871 between England and Scotland. In 1877 the number of players in a match was reduced to 15 a side, where it remained for another hundred years. During that time, substitutions were seldom allowed for injury. If a man had to go off the field, his team carried on without him.

There was something heroic about this: being outnumbered and insisting on continuing with the match. In 1964, the Springbok wing Jannie Engelbrecht broke his collarbone playing for Western Province in a Currie Cup match against Northern Transvaal. With substitutes not allowed, his captain refused to let him go off. With one arm hanging uselessly for much of the second half, Engelbrecht scored two tries to take Province to a 16-11 win.

But serious injuries were less frequent in those days. In the 1970 series between the Springboks and the All Blacks, physically one of the hardest of all time, the Springboks used only 21 players in four Tests.

It was a strange paradox that as rugby became more professional and less dirty (in the sense of deliberate foul play), it became more violent. As the top players became bulkier and better conditioned, tackles and collisions happened with greater pace and force. The injury toll mounted.

In the 1980s, it was conceded that substitutions needed to be allowed for genuine medical reasons. In South Africa, the substituting player had to hand the referee a note from a doctor certifying that the player who had gone off could not continue. Of course this system could not last. It was impractical and open to abuse, and in any case at club and school level a doctor was seldom there.

And so the principle of substitution was accepted. It was actually no longer a 15-man game. The game’s administrators eventually settled on an eight-man reserve bench at top level, with substitutions for injuries but also, in effect, for tactical reasons. Coaches would try to cover all bases: a tight forward, a loose forward, front row, halves, utility back. But it was understood that these were reserves: the best XV would start the game, and the best XV would continue to be picked for every game if possible. That’s how selectors, coaches, players and the media saw it.

However, Erasmus went beyond thinking of the eight-man bench as reserves. He saw them as equal members of the team. He invented what became known as the bomb squad — an apt nickname, not least for its capacity to intimidate the opposition. By picking seven forwards and one back, instead of the customary four/three split, he was able to bring on virtually a full pack of fresh forwards in the second half.

Defeated opponents, notably England, complained. But there was nothing in the laws to prevent it. It has proved devastatingly effective, especially when the world’s best player in a position — like hooker Malcolm Marx — rumbles onto the field as a “substitute”.

The bomb squad’s effectiveness is linked to another, less obvious aspect of Erasmus’s innovative genius — his approach to selection.

Kitch Christie, who took the Boks to unexpected World Cup glory in 1995, was once asked what the most difficult aspect of coaching was. He replied in one word: “Selection.”

Christie regarded Tiaan Strauss as one of the two best flankers in the country, but believed there was not room for both Strauss and captain Francois Pienaar in his World Cup squad. As Kobus Wiese, lock forward in that 1995 team, put it: “The decision wasn’t about how good or bad Tiaan was as a player. Kitch knew exactly how good he was, but he felt that the team dynamics demanded he make a different decision.” In essence, Christie felt he could not accommodate two captains in the side.

Such dilemmas have plagued coaches for much of the past three decades. The approach has always been to keep picking your best 15 available players, backed by eight substitutes — usually while agonising about who to leave out. Changes from match to match were made only when forced by injury.

Erasmus has blown all that away. He has built a squad of about 50 players, the equivalent of more than three genuine Springbok teams. This is unprecedented anywhere. He has demonstrated that there is a torrent of ability available in South Africa to support this policy, as long as the fresh talent is backed and allowed to prove itself.

Erasmus has taken his tactical opportunities, but he also knows that injury is still a factor in substitution, perhaps now more than ever.

Erasmus knows what his predecessors always knew, in a strong rugby nation like South Africa: sometimes there is nothing to choose between two or three players — even four — in a position. But Erasmus solves the problem by picking them all and rotating them. There are certainly exceptional, once-in-a-generation talents like lock Eben Etzebeth — but for most players, Erasmus has shown how arbitrary it is to pretend to select one “best” XV.

Erasmus has taken his tactical opportunities, but he also knows that injury is still a factor in substitution, perhaps now more than ever. Players are better conditioned and the laws that protect them — for example, from being tackled in the air — have been tightened. But nobody is immune to concussion. A head injury assessment can mean weeks or more out of the game — all the more reason to ensure that blooded players are ready to step in.

More important than his approach to selection is Erasmus’s communication of it. He has persuaded his players that when they are omitted, they are not “dropped” — though the media often persist in using this language, as when they talk about the “starting XV” as the best team. In the Erasmus Bok side, starting a match is no particular honour and being omitted is not necessarily a rejection. It all depends on the needs of the team.

A further aspect of Erasmus’s approach is that he encourages players to exploit their talent to the full, rather than being pigeonholed into playing a particular role. His lock forwards must do their job at the lineouts, but they also roam at pace, handle like backs and score tries from open play — as Franco Mostert and Etzebeth did in the 45-12 thrashing of Wales in November. Flankers coming off the bench can play centre, fullbacks can take over at scrumhalf.

Etzebeth is 2.03m tall and weighs 117kg but was able to keep pace for about 40m with the flying winger Kurt-Lee Arendse before taking the latter’s pass to score. Erasmus’s rotation policy means he can rest his older star players (Etzebeth is 33) more often, and so prolong their careers and help them retain their enthusiasm.

All the great coaches have known that they must treat players as individuals. Danie Craven, Springbok player, selector, coach and administrator for nearly 50 years, liked to say that when a player of genius emerged, like flyhalf Naas Botha or centre Michael du Plessis, the wise coach will just let him play and not try to mould him to a pattern. “Otherwise,” Doc said, “you might as well try and turn my dog Bliksem into a fullback.”

Christie, successful at every level of the game, was known as a people’s coach. “Kitch was an honest person and an honest selector, and the players responded to him because of that,” said Wiese. “He was also very good at understanding people and what made them tick. That was how he got the best out of you.”

Erasmus himself has written (in Rassie: Stories of Life and Rugby, with David O’Sullivan) that “a coach has to have a proper, open communication system with his players. Whatever is going on, or decided in the boardroom or at selection meetings, if the coach isn’t consistently giving the players information, then all they get is rumours and misinformation through other means like social media.”

Of course there has to be a solid rugby foundation. At the highest level, good strategy, fitness, exceptional skills and effective teamwork are almost taken for granted.

But there are exceptions.

In 2000, Springbok coach Harry Viljoen went into a Test match against Argentina instructing his men not to kick the ball at all — self-evidently a poor strategy to everyone but Viljoen. The team mutinied at halftime and managed to avert defeat. Viljoen resigned after just 11 Tests.

Another short-lived tenure was that of Carel du Plessis, coach in 1997 when Erasmus made his international debut as a player. Du Plessis, who was known as The Prince of Wings in his playing career, paid the price for a 2-1 series defeat by the British & Irish Lions with dismissal after just eight Tests.

“The problem was that he just couldn’t explain his rugby vision to us,” wrote Erasmus. “When Carel told us his game plan, big English words came out of his mouth. He was a brilliant player and was highly intelligent in his understanding of the game, but we simply couldn’t see what he saw. The way he explained spaces on the field was almost scientific. We didn’t have time to adapt to his style of play.”

Which brings us to what business leaders can learn from Erasmus. In rugby, as in leading companies, the easy part is decide on a strategy and plan, and find the best people to execute it. The really hard part is to get those people to actually do what you want them to do, while reaching the highest possible level of team performance — to go from good to great, as management guru Jim Collins put it.

The traditional 20th-century business school way to run a good company boiled down to endless advice on:

• Strategy — what you choose to do. If you are in mining, do you disinvest from platinum in favour of copper? If in retail, do you engage in a price war to gain market share?
• Structure — what you put in place to support your strategy. Do you need a new department to deal with changing market conditions? How much responsibility is delegated from head office? How do you prevent duplication and “wheelspin”?
• Systems — how you ensure that the wheel does not have to be reinvented every day. How do you simplify chains of command and decision-making? How do you monitor, measure and reward the company’s performance and the contribution of individual employees?

The problem with this approach is that it lends itself to rigidity in some environments. It may be appropriate for a mechanised production environment, or a railway network where efficiency, punctuality and routine safety measures are essential. However, systems and structure might easily be destructive in a place where creativity is important, like a fashion design company or an advertising agency — or a rugby team.

Prof Sumantra Ghoshal of the London Business School argued in the early 2000s that while the “three Ss”, as he called them, were useful, they were an outdated management doctrine. In the 21st century, he said, a new management philosophy was needed: that of the “three Ps”: purpose, process and people.

• Purpose — focuses more on the outcome. Allows more agility and flexibility when strategy needs to be adapted in changing circumstances. Ghoshal argued that if a company’s values are only self-serving (which strategies tend to be), they lose appeal for both employees and customers. Is your strategy signed off and then regarded as immutable for a set period? Does your strategy align with your broader purpose?
• Process — less rigid than a structure usually is. A focus on process is likely to emphasise collegiality above by-the-book practices. Do your employees find themselves operating in silos, unable to interact with the appropriate problem-solver? Does your organisational hierarchy forbid questioning those in authority, or does it prefer a process where rank is less important than creativity or disruption? Do you encourage risk-taking?
• People — accepts that people might need to work within systems to some extent, but they should not necessarily be subordinate to them. Does your company insist that people fit the job descriptions generated by the system, or does it adapt the requirements to the individual? Another example: does your system of performance review depend more on scores and box-ticking than imaginative empathy? Ghoshal believed companies “should shift from a purely transactional relationship with their employees to one that fosters mutual respect, commitment, and a sense of belonging”.

The key point, Ghoshal believed, is that “many people make the mistake of treating the three Ps as substitutes; they are not. The trick is to supplement the S-doctrine with the P-doctrine.”

It should be clear by now that while Erasmus understands the importance of the three Ss and relies on them as a foundation, he is really operating fully in the world of the three Ps. Most rugby coaches, from international level down, are still in the realm of the three Ss — because it seems so secure and safe.

This is how Erasmus is able to focus on each individual player, working out not only how he can contribute to the team (which is essential), but also how to get the best out of him. That means giving the player permission to make mistakes and, perhaps the most difficult step of all if you are genuine about it, trusting him. None of this is encouraged by the three Ss, but it is almost mandatory under the three Ps.

Nick Mallett coached the Springbok to 17 successive Test victories, equalling the record set by the All Blacks. He described Erasmus as “a broken-field specialist. In an instant he would sum up a turnover situation or an intercept situation. None of the players could read a game the same way Rassie could.”

Mallett described Erasmus as a genius when he was a player. It is a different kind of gift, as a coach, to get others to share your vision and selflessly commit 100% to the common goal. It is such a team that can create single-point victories, as the Springboks did in three successive knockout victories in taking the World Cup in 2023. That was not luck. It was the product of an environment where individuals could express themselves without fear of failure.

The need for renewal in organisations, wrote Ghoshal, “comes from the fact that work environments are full of constraints, control, compliance and contract. This makes it difficult for employees to show initiative, learning, experimenting, or co-operation. The context has to be renewed. It must move from compliance to discipline; from constraint to stretch; from control to support; and from contract to trust.”

The professor might have been describing what Erasmus has achieved with the Springboks. And, as Mallett said: “Rassie got the gees going; he was good at that.”