Why Rassie Erasmus must lead the Springboks until 2035

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Published on 18th June 2025 | Leave a response

Rassie Erasmus must lead the Springboks until 2035. He should be reappointed as Springboks coach for the next decade, which includes the 2035 Rugby World Cup, writes Mark Keohane.

Erasmus, who was appointed National Director of Rugby in 2018 and assumed the head coaching duties as well, continued as National Director of Rugby in 2020 and appointed his assistant Jacques Nienaber as head coach for the four-year cycle between the 2019 and 2023 World Cup campaigns. Erasmus in 2024 again took the head coach job as Nienaber sought the challenge of coaching Irish giants Leinster.

Erasmus’s current contract runs to the end of the 2027 World Cup in Australia, as his Boks chase an historic three successive World Cup title wins and record fifth Springboks World Cup title.

For me, it can only be a boost to the player base and South African rugby landscape to entrust Erasmus with the project of world rugby dominance, and ensure that he is never lost to South African rugby.

No coach in the history of South African rugby has had such an active involvement with the national set-up as Erasmus. His playing career was cut short through injury, but he played 36 Tests for the Boks under Nick Mallett, won the Tri Nations and won a bronze medal at the 1999 World Cup.

RASSIE THE SPRINGBOKS PLAYER WAS SPECIAL

He was Jake White’s Springboks Technical specialist in the build-up to the 2007 World Cup in France, which the Boks won. He did not travel with the squad as he committed to taking charge of the Stormers for the 2008 season. In 2011, he travelled to the World Cup in New Zealand as the Technical Specialist to Bok coach Peter de Villiers.

In 2012, Erasmus left the Stormers as Director of Rugby to head the national High Performance at SA Rugby, where he worked in conjunction with Bok coach Heyneke Meyer in the lead-in to the 2015 World Cup in England.

Erasmus left SA Rugby in 2016 to head up rugby at Munster and spent 18 months there before returning to South Africa at the end of 2017.

He assumed his national Bok role in 2018 and has been at the helm of the Springboks in every sense for the past eight years. In this time the Boks have won successive World Cups, won a series against the British & Irish Lions, won the Rugby Championship twice, beaten Australia in successive Tests in Australia, beaten the All Blacks in successive Tests in South Africa, beaten the All Blacks in New Zealand and won against every team the Boks have battled since 2018.

The Boks, under his leadership, have gone from seventh in the world rankings to number one. No Springboks team has held the No 1 position for as many weeks as the Erasmus/Nienaber Boks have since winning the World Cup title in 2019.

No Springboks coach has ever championed transformation like Erasmus. He buried the history of the Springboks as a team representative of an elite minority and his selections rewrote history and made them the people’s team and one reflective of a unified democratic South Africa.

HOW RASSIE TRANSFORMED THE SPRINGBOKS