Rassie Erasmus: ‘It wasn’t tough to be united when Irish people are standing together’
assie Erasmus had not been in Ireland long before some friendly Irish persuasion drew him out of his shell.
For an Afrikaan-speaking family moving more than 10,000km out of their comfort zone to start life afresh in Limerick, landing at Shannon Airport last June was, Erasmus admitted, intimidating, even for a former Springbok flanker.
Being invited soon after to a neighbourhood barbecue was almost as nerve-wracking for Munster’s new director of rugby. Erasmus, 43, and his wife, Gesin, reluctantly dragged their three daughters, 12-year-old twins and another aged five, out into their park and braced for impact.
“We’re a very private family, but the Irish don’t allow you to be private and I’m so glad it happened,” he says with a broad smile.
“We had a street barbecue and myself and my family were kind of sticking together but the Irish are always forcing you to not be like that and I’m enjoying it!
“You can ask my wife, we’re actually very private people, but we’re glad the way it’s turned out. I’m enjoying that the most, which I never thought I would. You’re always sociable with your mates, your rugby mates, but the whole street is now friends. Two weeks ago our whole street went to a restaurant, 15 couples!
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was intimidating. I’ll never forget the day when me and my wife and three daughters arrived at Shannon Airport. We’re all Afrikaans’ speaking, my wife’s a medical nursing sister, my children were in the middle of their school years in South Africa and it was intimidating. To get them into school here and get them confident and understanding they had to speak English to people, there’s a lot of intimidating stuff.
“And it was intimidating walking into a squad here not knowing half the players. I knew the international players from seeing them on TV, but I didn’t know the CEO, didn’t know the media, we still had two training bases, there were so many things.
“But the way people help you in a short space of time to settle in and make you feel at home, especially through a tough time like Axel passing away, they just wrap their arms around you and help you through. They make you feel like you’ve been here for years. It feels like we’ve been here for two years not five months.
“We’re privileged. There were so many uncertainties coming here but there’s been so many privileges. Just for the children to be able to speak English on a daily basis. There have been days when they’ve been upset with me in the last few months and they’ve asked ‘why?’ but I hope when they’re 18 they’ll say ‘that was unbelievable’.
“My wife is settling in really well too, we’ve wonderful neighbours who are very inclusive and we’re enjoying it a lot.”
Life is good, then, for the Erasmus clan, just six months into a minimum three-year stay in Ireland, not least the unexpected pleasure of getting more down time with his family compared to the arduous travelling schedules demanded in South African and Super Rugby.
At no point could Erasmus have been more grateful for that quality time with nearest and dearest than in the aftermath of Anthony Foley’s death. Brought in to take control of Munster in a new role for the province, the South African’s appointment had removed many responsibilities from Foley’s remit as head coach. Yet, the pair had forged a close working relationship in their short time together before the Munster legend’s untimely death eight weeks ago at the team hotel in Paris.
As a player and coach Erasmus had lost team-mates and colleagues before, including the Springboks’ 1995 World Cup winner Ruben Kruger, who died aged 39 in 2010 from lung cancer and five years earlier 26-year-old Bulls centre Etienne Botha in a car accident. Yet nothing had prepared him for these circumstances.
“I’ve been part of teams where we’ve had players die... These things happen but I think Axel’s status, him being a Munster man through and through and never moved; a player and a coach and his dad was here; being the actual head coach of the team the night before a game, I think that’s what actually made it so tough for players, coaches, opposition coaches, all over the world people just stood together.
“So it was tough. Adversity can sometimes split people up or unify people. But, and I’m not just talking about the Munster squad, I’m talking about the Irish people and the way they dealt with it, from (government) ministers to the normal guy in the street, to team-mates and opposition team-mates and coaches, it wasn’t tough to be united when Irish people are standing together like that.
“It was so unfortunate but it was so nice to see Irish people doing that.”
For those who worked closely with Foley there have been plenty of rough moments since his passing but also plenty of perspective also, for as Erasmus says, they are not in the place Olive Foley and her sons tragically find themselves.
“If you look at Olive and the two boys, the moment you feel a little bit sorry for yourself, you know, how are we going to get past this, how are we going to do X, Y or Z, you just look at what other people are going through and you realise, you’re still so blessed, for what you have in your family, and your kids and the privilege to be in rugby.
“You go to work again and you see a player struggling who was so close to Axel and now he must go train and go play on Saturday and your problems become so small that you just go past them. I think that’s how we deal with it.”
Collectively, Munster have so far coped remarkably well since the loss of their head coach on October 16. The ordeal of playing Glasgow Warriors a day after Foley’s funeral was met with a performance for the ages as they brushed aside their Champions Cup rivals with a bonus-point win on a day of heightened emotions, making light of being reduced to 14 men following the first-half red card for Keith Earls.
Five more wins have followed in the Guinness PRO12 to propel Munster to the top of the league but Erasmus knows that if his players are to do justice to Foley’s legacy they will have pass another challenging test of their resilience.
Munster have still to return to Paris on January 7 to fulfil the Champions Cup round one pool fixture with Top 14 champions Racing 92 that was postponed following Foley’s passing in the French capital. Erasmus accepts that will be a difficult hurdle to negotiate but that Foley’s presence remained with the players and management.
“Every day or every week, there’s something reminding you,” he said. “Just Axel’s office or when you sit in a coaches’ meeting, or when we go to play in Cork or play here, there’s always things that remind you. You see his sons at the game or see Olive somewhere... it will always be there. I think with time, different people handle things differently. We still have to go back to Paris and we have to go and play Racing there, and it’s going to be difficult. But I think what the team’s decided, and we’re not in anyway saying we’re going to win more matches or we’re going to have this wonderful season, but we did decide that we want to play in certain areas the way Axel wanted us to play.
“We can’t say we’re going to win for Axel because we’ll lose a lot of games and then you’re unsuccessful when you say that, but it’s more that we said we want to play the way he wanted us to play and I think that’s his legacy, when we get into those tough times and we’re questioning and wondering why things happen that will be the thing that drives us to get past those things.”
When Erasmus came into the Munster set-up during the summer, bringing defence coach Jacques Nienaber with him to join a staff featuring Foley, scrum coach Jerry Flannery and new attack coach Felix Jones, his fresh eyes did not spot a squad low on confidence after a difficult season. Instead, he saw a talented squad of players whose deficiencies did not reside in their skill sets but their heads.
“I definitely noticed that the players are talented and compared to different teams that I’ve worked in, these guys’ skills are up there with the best. So I guess the frustration wasn’t in that. Listen, I’m not saying we should walk over every team, that’s how good we are, but the skills are definitely up there, Irish skills are definitely up there. Irish rugby players overall, I know there are only four provinces but I really think the skills of the players (are excellent). I think maybe sometimes they put other country’s teams, players, a little bit on pedestals and don’t realise how good they are. Maybe (now) they’ve realised they are really that good. So if they’ve been in any way helped to realise that then it’s great.
“I know Axel and the way he tried to make guys believe in themselves so maybe there’s a little bit of they’ve woken up and seen, ‘yes, I can compete’.” There had also been a sense before that fateful weekend in Paris that a higher level of performance was in the offing.
“We did discuss it and said ‘listen here, we feel we’re one or two weeks away from getting the plane off the ground. We just needed a little bit of momentum. I felt we were in a good place before the Racing game. I’m not at all saying we would have beaten them but I felt we were on the up and that we were getting there.
“Myself and Axel actually discussed it the Friday night before the game but it’s such a weird thing to say afterwards because we’ve won (six) games in a row now and it might sound clever, but with the group we have and the amount of injuries we had and things not going so well it really was just a matter of time before we got on a little bit of a run. We’re still only on a little run, there’s a still a while to go.”
Erasmus says he has not needed to reassess the potential of his squad following the upturn in performance levels since Foley’s death. Instead he suggests his players may have done that for themselves.
“I think they might have been forced into doing that and maybe the coaches that were involved last year, Jerry and Felix. But for us, when we came in, because we came in with uncluttered minds and we’d worked with other players, we saw that Irish players, not just Munster players, are really talented and skilful and hard-working, committed players. And maybe somebody from the outside seeing that and saying that, and again maybe when Axel passed away, the players did some self-assessment and said ‘listen here, this is still only a game and if I enjoy it with my skill and commitment I can become a really good rugby player.
“Maybe that contributed, in a combination, perhaps, us coming in and Axel passing away, to the players doing some self-assessment and seeing that rugby is just a game.”
As Erasmus continues to stress, this is just the start for his Munster, and there is much more to be done, in players’ minds and the recruitment of fresh talent, before the organisation truly reflects his vision for it.
As far he is concerned, his players are not yet all on the same page and there is only so long he can wait for the stragglers to catch up.
“The players are highly skilled here and the work ethic is exceptional. I’ve been surprised with how quickly some players have reacted to it and just switched on and let the shackles off and said ‘I’m going to trust myself here and if I make a mistake I’ll just get back on to it and try again’. And then some others I’m thinking ‘he’s still not seeing the light, he doesn’t know how good he is’.
“Then like anything else, I’m sure I’ve disappointed a few players with my coaching and Jacques has done that. All people are not the same. Some don’t experience everything as positively as others and others you think ‘hell, I wish he would see the light’ and just start kicking on, which has happened.
“So some are so much on track and some are getting behind and some are just kind of stagnating, so it will definitely take a while to get the group right. We haven’t had a contracting off-season where you want to really assess and sign on or extend or not extend contracts, that only happens next June, July. So we haven’t had that first round of refining the group to the way we want the group and that will also be a challenge in the next six, seven months.”
Erasmus may have come a long way in a short time at Munster but there is clearly plenty more road to be travelled.
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