Rassie Erasmus at the 2014 Craven Week
Rassie Erasmus’ biggest role as high performance manager is to implement Heyneke Meyer’s plans across the board.
Erasmus, widely praised for his work in turning Western Province rugby around, was spotted at the Coca-Cola Craven Week in Middelburg. Having joined Saru as high performance manager in April 2012, Erasmus has been working tirelessly to implement a new structure in South African rugby, building a team of coaches, analysts and medical staff that can help develop the country’s best young talent into potential Springbok candidates. Craven Week plays an integral role in this development, something that Erasmus is well aware of.
Article by Brenton Chelin
“Firstly it’s important to give the boys the honour of representing their provinces at this high level at this stage of their career and then to see how they perform under pressure,” says Erasmus on the role of Craven Week. “We have a number of people on the ground here, from our development department, high performance, the Under 20 coaches, the national selectors and we’re rating the players as they play. We’re having a workshop with the players this week where we get them onto the database. We want to make sure that by the time they get to Under 20 level with Dawie (Theron), there’s not too much to be done.”
His role as high performance manager is far reaching. He overseas an expansive team all with one main goal; to implement Heyneke Meyer’s Springbok blueprint at all levels. It is a system that has proven effective across codes, most notably with the German international football that were recently crowned world champions. Such continuity will only help with the transition of young players into the senior ranks says Erasmus.
“Our biggest role is to take Heyneke’s blueprint and try to filter it down to Dawie. One of the nice thing about Heyneke is his willingness to share ideas with everybody. The Mobi-Unit guys, Louis Koen, Jean Roux, Pieter de Villiers work with the Springboks and have first hand experience on Heyneke’s coaching techniques and philosophies, and Dawie uses them as well at SA Under 20 and at SA Schools, so all that knowledge is shared. Dawie can still make decisions on which aspects he’s going to use. At this stage he’s incorporated a lot of the stuff and it’s working really well for him, but he’s added his own flavour to the gameplan. It makes it easier for a player like Handré Pollard or Pieter-Steph du Toit to move up between the ranks. So we want to take the blueprint to the SA Schools team and as far down the system as we can.”
Craven Week remains the pinnacle of schoolboy rugby, but what of the boys that aren’t selected for one reason or another? Players like Bryan Habana and Willie le Roux never represented their provinces on schoolboy rugby’s greatest stage. Erasmus was quick to stress that failure to play at the Craven Week is not the end of the line for talented youngsters.
“You don’t want to exclude guys that don’t make the Craven Week for future Springbok selection, but obviously if you get to the Craven Week then you’ve got enough talent. We’ve got a scouting system where we look for guys that through no fault of their own don’t make the Craven Week sides, but most of the boys playing here will make up the SA U20 squad eventually.”
Brendan Venter has remarked how much work is being done behind the scenes.
Threre is almost nothing the springbok staff can do to develop player skills at the highest level and very little effort is being done at provincial level. so you will always get “supporters” moaning about the bok gameplan when most of our teams play a defensively orientated games. Or teams that don’t defend enough.
There will alwaus be people that say “but I am worried about his defense” yet they want player s who score tries… You can’t always have it both ways.
To the dissatisfaction of many. Heyneke and Rassie will get another 4 years, which will be great because by then the thirteen year olds coming through will start to go professional.
If you look at the young players at our disposal, I hope we will be a threat at the 2015 wc… but in 2019 We are going to have a MONSTER team when you look at the young players in the system. We have a good mix of players with experience coming to the end of their careers and players starting their careers.
So there is some intense work going into younger players. . loving it
cricket going well. .. touch wood 174/1 at a healthy rate too
MacroBull wrote:
Sounds good, forgot that there is cricket on, time to switch the Walka from SS1 to SS2
😉
@ nortierd:
lol lucky you. im following in cricinfo
Elgar on 102
Faf on 56
Amla, abdv, de kock and JP 20 runs still to come… looking good for the proteas.
Great work by Elgar. Good stuff.
First South african to score a 100 in Sri Lanka.
Off for a bike ride. Will check in after tea
@ Just For Kicks:
Hi and bye 😀 enjoy the ride
@ MacroBull:
Saw he got his ton, didn’t know it was the 1st Protea batsman to do it in Sri Lanka
Interesting stat
10 @ nortierd:
First OPENING batsmen I believe.
@ Scrumdown:
my apologies. I read it in the cricinfo comments.
Hansie . Rudulph. Cullinan and Klusener have all scored 100’s in lanka
11 @ Scrumdown:
Thanks
@ MacroBull:
Vir wat loop en lieg jy so oopmond vir my?
@ nortierd:
haha gebeur aa jy krieket kyk sonder n tv
pressure on amla forxing the mistake. What a horrible way to get out after hitting a four
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