Rassie Erasmus insists that he will not disrespect Argentina by placing all the Springboks’ focus on the upcoming Greatest Rivalry series with the All Blacks.
Excitement is mounting ahead of the four Tests against New Zealand, but they still have a match to win against Los Pumas before they can think about that.
While it ultimately serves as a warm-up to the games against their arch-rivals, Erasmus is still putting all his focus on beating the Argentinians.
Greatest Rivalry chatter
During his press conference, the Boks boss was at pains to state that there was still an international to win as the questions came firing in about the All Blacks series.
“I’m really honest and it’s not a cliché I’m saying, if you are an Argentinian or Argentinian player and we sit here talking about the All Blacks series, and they hear this press conference, it would be a slap in the face,” Erasmus told reporters.
“We want to try and beat Argentina, which is a really tough team. We’ve lost here, they gave us the biggest hiding since we’ve been the coaching team.”
After making his point clear, Erasmus did then go on to discuss where the 23 players that take to the field on Saturday stand in regards to the Greatest Rivalry.
There are a few first-choice players involved, but it is generally a mixture of injury-returnees, fringe players and youngsters that will face Argentina this weekend.
Returning stars
Eben Etzebeth, Lood de Jager and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu are among those to overcome their respective injury problems to start in Buenos Aires as they look to prove their fitness before taking on the All Blacks.
“For those guys, we all believe that they will be in the Greatest Rivalry squad. They might not play in the first Test; they might play 50 minutes in the first Test depending if Lood comes through, when Franco [Mostert] gets back, if Eben finds form.
“New Zealand have got a seven-week tour, it’s four Test matches, it’s as long as a rugby pool in a Rugby World Cup, it’s a massive long tour.
“I guess we’ll sit down in four weeks, we’ll say: ‘We’ve played two New Zealand matches, do you have players left? Who’s still standing?’
“I really believe that it’s going to be tougher than a World Cup pool and normally after a World Cup pool matches, you really struggle to find enough locks, enough loose forwards, enough fly-halves. You don’t go to a World Cup without two or three fly-halves on the radar.
“It’s not in the sense that they must play themselves into the squad, we’re definitely going to use them during The Greatest Rivalry series, but we really just have to get past this tough hurdle that’s in front of us.”
