High risk, high reward - Inside the mind of Springboks maverick Rassie Erasmus

South Africa coaching guru Rassie Erasmus is renowned for innovation and re-imagining rugby to keep his Springboks ahead of the chasing pack. But with every Erasmus innovation, there's always this tantalising dab of risk.

We saw it again last Sunday in Edinburgh as he unleashed his controversial tactic of seven forwards from the bench in the 45th minute against Scotland. The infamous 'bomb squad' swung the balance back in the Boks' favour, and they ran out 32-15 winners.

Erasmus has been doing this sort of thing for nearly two decades, but when he comes up with quirks or left-field suggestions, it still catches even his most trusted players out, as backline star Cheslin Kolbe can attest.

Kolbe was jolted awake just before 4am on the Monday following the Springboks' one-point win over England in the 2023 Rugby World Cup semifinal. Kolbe rolled over in bed and saw his phone flashing, showing 30 missed calls. They ranged from the Springboks coaching staff to the operations director and the team doctor.

"It was disconcerting," Kolbe told ESPN. "I woke my wife and asked, 'Did I do anything wrong?'"

They couldn't think of anything, so Kolbe phoned team captain Siya Kolisi, waking him up too. Kolisi also couldn't think of any reason why the Boks management was urgently trying to get hold of the Kolbe, one of the world's great wingers. Eventually, after exchanging a few frantic missed calls, Kolbe was summoned to the coaches' room.

The Tokyo Sungoliath winger poked his head around the door, bleary-eyed: "I was still fast asleep as I walked into the room and saw this massive table with all the coaches sitting there."

They burst out laughing at his sheepish demeanour. They hadn't slept, pulling an all-nighter looking for anything and everything to swing the impending World Cup final against the All Blacks into their favour.

Kolbe recounted: "I sat down when coach Rassie just asked if I'd be comfortable to cover scrum-half because he wanted to go with a 7-1 split. I didn't expect it, especially in a World Cup final to take that kind of chance."

The 7-1 split would allow Erasmus to pick seven forwards on the bench and just one back -- in this case, it was experienced fullback Willie le Roux. That meant they wouldn't have a specialist scrum-half on the bench, hence the ask for Kolbe to step up to an unfamiliar role if required.

They'd used this tactic before, back before the World Cup in their last warm-up match against New Zealand. Le Roux, a fullback, was a late withdrawal and replaced on the bench by Kwagga Smith, a flanker.

The tactical switch, though, was pre-planned, as Eben Etzebeth revealed to ESPN: "I remember we played Wales [on Aug. 19, 2023] and New Zealand was our next game [on Aug 25] and I saw [Erasmus] by the gym entrance.

"I hadn't played Wales because I had a bit of a niggle and Rassie said, 'Are you ready for New Zealand?' I'm like, 'Yeah'. He's like, 'Okay, cool, because I think I'm going 7-1'. I said, 'Wow, okay'."

Erasmus felt it was a gamble worth taking front-loading the bench with what he calls his 'bomb squad'. After defeating New Zealand, the move received criticism from former Scotland coach Matt Williams, saying it was 'not morally correct'.

"I think if there is innovation in any sport, it gets reaction, positive or negative," Boks coach Jacques Nienaber said at the time. They went 7-1 again for their pool stage match against Ireland and revived it for the final against the All Blacks.

"We thought about the odds of using the last back," Erasmus says. "Okay, the World Cup final is a bit extreme to go seven-one as you are chancing your arm, but I think overall the stats have shown that you seldom use that last sub."

A few days after Kolbe's early wake-up call, Erasmus' call on the bench ended up swinging the balance of the final in the Springboks' favour, and they secured back-to-back World Cup triumphs, beating the All Blacks 12-11.

Kolbe added: "Everybody was laughing at it. Now it's a big strength of this team; it's exciting as a backline player to see you a whole pack coming off the bench bringing a different energy.

"[Erasmus is] always 5, 10 steps ahead of everyone else. He sees this game completely differently and knows what he wants to do and what he wants to achieve out of every game. He's never scared to trial things, which is good because South African rugby has probably never been like that."

The most overqualified water boy in rugby

Erasmus was well-known for his innovation even before he joined the Springboks as head coach in 2018. In the late 90s, he was inseparable from his laptop, pouring over hours of clips and building his library of analysis.

This led to him developing the "Outfox" tool which the Springboks use to simulate certain playbook moves - it's set up like a PlayStation where each player controls themselves on the screen, simulating passages of play, getting it engrained in their minds before they go out on the training field and try it for real.

"Rassie wants to evolve as the game evolves. What helped us win the World Cup in 2019 didn't help in 2023," Kolisi said at a media roundtable ahead of the Autumn Internationals.

"I think I've been involved for 12 years and every time we come in he's always got something new. That keeps you going. It keeps guys who have been involved a long time excited to learn and wanting to get better.

"Rassie puts the ideas on the table but doesn't say, 'This is the plan, do it'. We will all talk then someone like Eben or Duane will say, 'This might work'. Then he [Rassie] makes the call and everyone buys into it and works on it."

It was back in his Cheetahs days (2004-07) that Erasmus first used the 'traffic light' system where he painted wooden panels of different colours, and sat on the roof of the stadium, dictating plays to his team by the colour of panels he'd hold up.

This system was revised for the recent World Cup where they had the 'traffic lights', which they said was to communicate the severity of injuries. Others were less sure that was their true purpose.

There are also the attempts to unsettle the opponents. Handre Pollard, the Boks fly-half, revealed that Erasmus during his Cheetahs days used to leave fake lineout calls around a stadium on the eve of the match, hoping the opposition would pick them up. His team would even run through some of these dummy calls in the warm-up to complete the deception.

Erasmus has also taken it upon himself to push the boundaries of his role. During the British & Irish Lions series in 2021, he took on a water carrier role which allowed him to communicate directly with his team in breaks of play.

"I think if you're the water boy running onto the pitch, you've got to make sure you're carrying water," Lions coach Warren Gatland said at the time, clearly unimpressed. This triggered World Rugby to change the laws in May 2022, dictating that "water carriers cannot be a director of rugby or head coach".

Erasmus refrained from changing his job title.

They've also utilised their coaching staff's range of skills. Nienaber, his trusted lieutenant, also happened to be a qualified physiotherapist, so there he was at the World Cup in 2019, able to run the touchline, keeping an eye on the welfare of his players but also aiding with any calls.

Then came the 2023 World Cup, where Erasmus' innovations went into overdrive. Alongside the traffic lights shining out from the coaches' box, Erasmus spent the week of their World Cup quarterfinal walking around with a huge speaker blaring out "La Marseillaise" at training, to make his team numb to the French anthem before playing in front of a packed Stade de France.

In that match, we saw two other bits of Erasmus's innovation. Before the tournament, they'd enlisted the help of France-based rugby consultant Paddy Sullivan just in case they faced Les Bleus. He knew French rugby better than most and had analysed Thomas Ramos' kicking style, even timing how long it takes him to go through the motions from his last glance at the posts to kicking the ball.

The Boks used that intel and worked with Kolbe on covering the necessary distance, and in the 23rd minute of the match, Kolbe sprinted off his line to charge down Ramos' conversion.

These innovations steered the Boks to the 2023 World Cup, but since then, Erasmus hasn't slowed down trying to think of ways of re-shaping the game. He's called on Kolbe to throw in at lineouts, utilising his old Sevens background as he took on the role against Australia in Brisbane.

Hooker Malcolm Marx had been sin-binned, and despite stand-in Marco van Staden being on the field, Kolbe took on the role: "The coaches have a lot they want to experiment out there, a lot of tricks.

"In Sevens I played sweeper, [and] threw the lineout so I was comfortable in doing so, but now you're throwing to guys that are two meters tall so you need to at that height of where you need to throw and you need to be accurate because at Test level you only get one opportunity. I've embraced it, and it means I get to train with the forwards for a few lineouts, too!"

During that match in Brisbane, we also saw the Boks tweak their lineout to pass the ball between two jumping pods which led to Kolisi scoring.

"[Erasmus] sees stuff, he told us, 'This guy's gonna be standing there, so you gonna be running with that guy,'" Kolisi said.

"So if you miss it, okay, you'll get a scrum if you knock it on, or something. But if you do get it, you have an opportunity to score. And we scored in that moment."

They showcased another version of a basketball pass between two pods against Argentina on Sept. 28, as Etzebeth scooped the lineout over his head to Pieter-Steph du Toit.

"When we did that lineout... it was like jeez... a no-look pass over the head," Du Toit told ESPN. "It's something new; we've been speaking about it and never done it. But yeah, it was something special."

Even some of Erasmus' closest confidants can't explain how he comes up with the things he does: "Over the past 30 years of working with Rassie, I've become used to his hunches and how accurate they are. I'm a man of science, and this is something I can't explain."

This is from Nienaber in Erasmus' autobiography "Rassie: A Story of Life and Rugby" on Erasmus' insistence on picking Morne Steyn on the bench for the third Lions Test in 2021. Steyn ended up kicking the match-winning penalty in the 78th minute. "[Erasmus] said it wasn't a hunch; he could see it," Nienaber said.

Erasmus sees these innovations as natural evolution, just like how he encourages young players to take ownership as they come through, he challenges his coaching staff to follow suit and find ways to question him and conventional thought.

"If you can come up with something, you can change our minds," Erasmus said. "But we have to evolve with the players. [Innovation and challenging the norms of the game] isn't done in an arrogant way, it's done in a way where we think it can work."

He says some of why he does it is to keep his teams focused: "Some of it is taking the nervousness away and looking forward to that specific thing you are going to do in the game.

"It could be that the pack are looking forward to that first line-out five metres out. Yes, sometimes it doesn't work, but we always look for something exciting."

Sometimes things backfire...

That's not to say it's always worked out well for Erasmus. His use of social media - he's far more vocal on X than other coaches - has landed him in hot water. In Nov. 2021 he was found guilty of threats to referee Nic Berry after a video was released - one Erasmus says was leaked - during the Lions series where throughout a 62-minute video, he pulled apart Berry's decisions.

Erasmus was charged with "an attack on the impartiality and integrity of the match officials" banned from all rugby activity for two months, and suspended from all matchday activities until the following September.

In Nov. 2022 he was banned for a fortnight after tweets focused on referee performances in defeats to Ireland and France were deemed to be critical. Erasmus, talking to a small group of media in October 2024, referenced those tweets in Nov. 2022 and said his turning to social media (and the subsequent innovative ideas) came off the back of frustration over ambiguity in policing of scrums and mauls.

But it came with the caveat: "Please don't pull this out of context because I don't want to fight a war with anybody, I'm tired of that."

For those senior players like Du Toit, Kolisi, Etzebeth and Kolbe, the promise of fresh innovation keeps them on their toes. Per Kolisi: "It keeps guys who have been involved a long time excited to learn and wanting to get better, every single time. That's where we are good as a group; we are always willing to take on things."

And they are happy for some risks to fall short, said Kolbe: "If it works, bonus if it doesn't work, it's a learning for every one of us and that's the only way we are going to develop and know if things will work.

"And he's not scared to try things out. That's the way he coaches, that's the way he sees the game and you just want to stay ahead of everyone."

We've already seen some unconventional thoughts on this northern hemisphere tour. When prop Frans Malherbe was injured, Erasmus replaced him in the squad with fly-half Jordan Hendrikse. When fullback Willemse pulled up, he brought in No.8 Cameron Hanekom. And then there was the deployment of the seven-one split against Scotland.

It's never dull with Erasmus and you have a feeling he has something up his sleeve for when he faces England on Saturday.