Africa-Press – South-Africa. Former Springbok coach Peter de Villiers has questioned the methods employed by Rassie Erasmus in highlighting refereeing discrepancies.
Erasmus, SA Rugby’s director of rugby, made headlines on the Springboks’ year-end tour to Europe this month when he took to Twitter to point out refereeing errors.
It followed South Africa’s narrow defeats to Ireland (19-16) in Dublin and France (30-26) in Marseille.
Erasmus was subsequently banned for two matches by World Rugby, but the governing body did state over the weekend that they held talks with him over the matter.
In a statement, SA Rugby said talks between the influential figures were geared towards “enhancing the process that operates between teams and match officials”.
De Villiers, though, reckons Erasmus’ opinions were one-sided and feels he was only looking at errors made against South Africa.
“That is not the game. The game is made out of milliseconds, quick decisions for players and for referees. [There are] things that you miss, but you don’t even know that you missed it,” De Villiers said on The Rugby Pod podcast.
“If you watch the [match] over and over you’ll pick up so many bad things… [but] what my take on this whole thing is, why didn’t he put out the bad things that the Springboks were allowed to do? Then to me, that [would have been] a just call. Because then he wants to show how bad the referee is on [all] his judgement calls.
“But whenever we lose to go and sit there and show what he (the referee) missed here and what he missed there… he (Erasmus) had the time to replay and replay and then made the videos. This not what our game is all about.
“It’s become so soft nowadays and with this little thing, I don’t think that we want to be exposed so much of our weaknesses.”
When probed what the public sentiment back home was on the Erasmus matter, De Villiers said there were mixed views.
De Villiers also took a swipe at the media for the manner in which they interpreted the saga.
“It [the sentiment] is very indifferent here in this country… if you look at our media, they went numb on this whole thing. And I’m not surprised because they actually don’t understand what this game is made of truly.
“What you see on that field in 80 minutes is only five percent of what the guys put in.”
“For SA Rugby, to not pulling him back into line and to tell him what they actually want as a team… the values and norms around the game and those kind of things.
“So yes, there are a lot of individuals, a lot of ex-Springboks who [are] not very happy with him. But let’s see when he comes back… because in this country, right has become wrong and wrong has become right.”
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