Rassie Erasmus breaks his silence on the Lions storm that split rugby and nearly cost him his career

Rassie Erasmus has cleared his diary for the day. The business lunch in neighbouring Stellenbosch has been cancelled because he wants to tell his story properly. ’10am at the wine farm,’ he says, sending a pin-drop for a vineyard in the hills opposite Table Mountain. ‘It will take as long as we need.’

Undeterred by the venomous puff adder and a herd of springboks on the driveway of the estate, he steps out of his wife’s 4×4 Toyota wearing a big grin. It is the smile that is held in so much affection by the locals. 

‘Thank you for everything you’ve done for our country,’ says one star-struck customer. On South African shores, Erasmus is a national treasure. Even the owner of the winery, the fourth Baronet of Cape Town, politely asks for a photograph.

Erasmus takes a seat at a table in the sunshine, with his thick Afrikaans accent cutting through the peaceful morning surroundings. ‘I want people to know that I’m not this monster that I’ve been portrayed as,’ he says.

‘Did you know my sister lives in Reading? She’s a social worker for the NHS. Fully invested in the English life. She loves the Royal Family, sings God Save the Queen and would stand outside clapping for the old guy, Sir Tom, who walked up and down his garden 100 times during the lockdown.

‘After what happened during the Lions tour, it felt like her family in the UK were the only people outside of South Africa who didn’t hate me. How do you think that makes you feel? It feels awful, man.’

This is the first time Erasmus has spoken in public since last July, when the South African director of rugby’s world blew up in a cloud of controversy. 

His hour-long video, picking apart the performance of referee Nic Berry, emerged on the internet and overnight Erasmus became rugby’s arch villain. In the court of public opinion, he was judged to have intentionally leaked the video and was pilloried for ruining the prestigious British and Irish Lions tour.

‘Listen, I have never been a suit-and-tie guy who claims to be a saint,’ he says. ‘I have never said I will be a life coach. I have never had slogans like ‘better people make better rugby players’. I have never said I’m the world’s greatest father. Yeah, I’ve always been a bit naughty and enjoyed a giggle but I’ve always been an honest guy.

Erasmus was speaking to rugby writer of the year Nik Simon (left) in Cape Town, South Africa

‘People think I leaked that video. I didn’t. Who leaks something like that? Why would I screw up my whole career to do that? I’ve got twin girls, 18 years old, who are at school and they hear other parents telling them how their dad had f***** it all up. 

‘My mum is at an old-age home and they’re showing her articles saying, “Rassie’s lost it, he’s got depression, he’s drunk”. They think those things because they are indoctrinated that I leaked that video. I want to tell the world that, swearing on my youngest child’s life, I did not leak that video. 

‘Many people have already made up their mind. How do you change people’s perception when World Rugby have found me guilty and banned me for 12 months? I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. I just want them to know what really happened.’

Across eight hours, Erasmus lifts the lid on what took place behind the scenes. The evening the tour was almost cancelled barely a week from the first Test, the day he was ready to resign, the controversy over him being an official ‘water carrier’ during matches and the conversations, or lack of, he had with Warren Gatland.

‘Because of Covid, the tour was on, off, on, off, on, off. We said we would play anywhere: Dubai, England, Twickenham. We just wanted to play. We even had hotels booked for England. We couldn’t move it on to the next year because it screws up the schedule of every other country. If we missed it, it was another 12 years.

Erasmus spoke to Simon on a number of topics in a frank, emotional eight-hour conversation

‘When it was cleared to go ahead, it was beautiful. Our saving grace. Our economy needed it and our people needed it. South Africa was burning, the previous president was in the news for stealing, people were dying, there were riots. It was total chaos. Our people needed something to look forward to.

‘Warren and our coaches all said nice things about each other in the press. We wanted the tour to be a happy thing. I even called Warren when he picked three hookers and said, “Are you sure you will manage with three hookers? The last thing we want is a circus where you don’t have two fit hookers for a game to go ahead”. 

‘He said, “S***, you know what, it makes sense,” and they enlarged their squad. It was all lekker [nice]. Warren and [South Africa coach] Jacques Nienaber even had a virtual wine tasting together. My CEO phoned saying, “They’re on the plane, the series is happening, we’re all happy”.’

Every now and then, Erasmus stops for a sip of his coffee. Sometimes he pauses and looks pensively across the skyline, locked in deep thought, visibly distressed by the memories. Before long, the waiter brings out the wine list. 

He also received widespread criticism for an hour-long video dissecting referee Nic Berry’s performance in the first Test against the Lions, which South Africa lost – he claims it was leaked

‘Here,’ he quips, ‘don’t make me out to be some fancy wine guy. I don’t know the difference between the cheapest stuff and the most expensive stuff! My colleagues do, though. We had our planning meeting for the 2019 World Cup in the cellar downstairs! There’s these massive wooden barrels. It’s lekker.’ 

Returning to last summer, he says: ‘We had three games before the Lions Test series: two against Georgia and one midweek game between South Africa A and the Lions. We played Georgia at the end of the week and then we got 24 positive cases, so the next Georgia game was cancelled for good reason. Their coach almost died.

‘Our plan was to play our Test team in the second game against Georgia and then play our toughest A team against the Lions to rough them up a bit. Soften them up. But according to the medical committee back in England, we weren’t even allowed outside of our hotel rooms to train.

‘They wanted to cancel our midweek game and they didn’t want us to fly to Cape Town until two days before the first Test. I said, “No chance”. We couldn’t go and play the Lions after one game of preparation in 18 months. It would be a farce.

‘I said to the Lions board, “I have spoken to my players and if this midweek game is off then the series is off”. It was a bluff. We couldn’t afford to call off the tour. If they had cancelled the tour I was ready to say I lied about having the backing of my players and I would have resigned.’

Erasmus won the 2019 World Cup and led his side to beat the British and Irish Lions in 2021

His bluff worked. The biggest gamble of Erasmus’s career came off. The fixture went ahead and South Africa came out on top. But the tour that was supposed to be a source of joy for a crippled nation soon turned sour.

‘Warren came out and said they must look at Faf de Klerk’s tackle. That was the headline. I thought, “Warren, we want this tour to be positive, why are you doing this?” I was p***** off, so I put out a tweet and the message I wanted him to hear was, “Stop talking sh*t in the media”.

‘When I spoke to Joel Jutge [World Rugby’s head of match officials] and Joe Schmidt [World Rugby’s then-director of high performance] I said can we stop this stuff in the press. They said they would speak to Gats and at the same time they also said they didn’t like the look of me being the water carrier, even though it was not prohibited.

‘The very next day, there were articles in every British newspaper saying Warren was unhappy about having a South African television match official in Marius Jonker. Don’t tell me that isn’t a way of putting Marius under pressure. That’s when I decided, “Screw this, I will be water carrier”.’

And there was one final point. ‘Before the first Test I had a meeting with the match officials. I explained to the referee that the Springboks had not played for two years since the World Cup and our captain Siya Kolisi would be up against a team with four international captains.

The touring side won the first Test match but lost the next two matches to lose the series

‘I knew from experience how they intimidate referees, so I asked that he must give Siya the same respect as Alun Wyn Jones, to which he agreed. People outside of South Africa might not understand this fully but having a black Springbok captain is a flammable situation in our country.

‘I lost a lot of friends when I made Siya captain. There was a lot of nastiness. Before the World Cup, my daughters’ friends’ parents would say, “Tell that f****** father of yours to stop sucking up for a pay cheque”. People said it was political. The fight to get people to believe in Siya was a real struggle.’

After months of uncertainty, the series finally kicked off. The Lions won the first Test in Cape Town, overturning their biggest half-time deficit for 83 years. They were 80 minutes away from a series victory after South Africa’s Bomb Squad, six forwards on the substitutes’ bench, failed to detonate. Yet the bitter taste would not go away.

‘When I was water carrier during that first Test, I was close to the action and I could see that Siya was not getting heard. Those people who always questioned Siya came back out and said, ‘See Rassie, you f***** this up, we were right all along’. 

‘I’m not saying Nic Berry is racist. Absolutely not. 100 per cent. I actually think he is a cool guy. But when you are in a volatile country with 54 million black people and six million white people then you at least need a conversation. I didn’t understand why Siya’s messages weren’t getting through: do they think he’s an a**hole? 

But his role as a ‘water carrier’ providing tactical details to his players came under scrutiny

‘There were also many decisions that I disagreed with and wanted clarity on. I phoned Nic on the Sunday after the game to discuss all of this, but was unsuccessful in setting up a meeting. Instead, I provided him with video clips of the decisions I required clarity on.

‘The feedback I received was inadequate. Only the obvious and not so critical mistakes were admitted, but the serious mistakes which affected the outcome of the match were not.

‘We tried again to engage but we were unsuccessful so I decided the only way to get clarity on the decisions was to send this voiceover video that the whole rugby world has now seen. I often send videos after the match. It is not unusual for me. I did it at the 2019 World Cup and it was all fine.

‘It’s a good way to explain and communicate things that require clarification. Joel came back to me and said, “Great work, you’ve got competent people there, we picked up the same things in our review”. I went back to the players and said, “We’re OK, we’ll have a great chance on Saturday”. Point made. Move on.

‘So why would I make this one public when I don’t make any of the others public? I only sent it to Joel and Joe at World Rugby, the ref, my CEO who was tour director, our head coach and my players. I submitted the video link to the restricted group using Vimeo, which is secure and safe. 

Erasmus cleared his diary for the day because he wanted to tell his story properly. The 49-year-old met Simon at a vineyard in the hills opposite Table Mountain in the west of the country

‘It was not possible for anyone to even search for the video on any search engine without the link. I have been using this platform for ages and there has never been a breach of confidentiality. If I wanted to leak it, there were many more effective ways to do it. Out of those I sent it to, only Joel and Joe were not in South Africa.

‘I looked at the viewing history and eight of the first 35 views were in Australia. How? Why on earth would I leak it to guys in Australia? It comes out and suddenly I look like the villain. It just doesn’t make sense.’

‘Listen, the mistake I made was not putting a password on the link. I didn’t think it was necessary. I compounded that by not warning that it was confidential. So I accept and agree with World Rugby’s finding that a public leak was almost inevitable.

‘I have to live with that and I unconditionally accept their verdict and the sanction imposed. I won’t challenge or criticise that in any way. But I repeat to you, I am not the person who leaked that video.’

As Erasmus talks, his emotion shows through his body language rather than his voice. The big grin is replaced by a pensive frown. ‘Sometimes people misinterpret me,’ he says. ‘English is my second language. Does it make sense to you? When that video leaked out, my mum asked me, “Rassie, why did you do that?”

He criticised Berry for apparently not showing enough respect to Springbok captain Siya Kolisi

‘All the reports just assumed I leaked it. Why? People thought I was losing the plot because they were all thinking: why the hell would you do this? The answer is that I didn’t. It felt awful. It’s like someone calling you a thief when you know you’re not. 

‘It became so accepted I did it that normal people in the street would come up to me and say, “Well done on exposing the guy”. It became the narrative that I leaked it and, man, it was f****** awful.

‘Before the second Test, all of the families could come and join the players in the bubble. Everyone else’s wives and daughters came in before the second and third Tests but my girls didn’t want to come. They felt embarrassed. They felt their own father embarrassed them. Think about it: how do you think that feels?

‘People said I had changed the values of the game that I love. I love this sport. I love the debates. I love the criticism – sometimes even Sir Clive Woodward’s criticism! Maybe one day we can review one of Sir Clive’s matches, collate all the stats and write a column about it; that would be fun!

‘If people want to talk about our style of rugby, great because it shows they’re interested. If they want to say it’s boring great, but I will take it on the chin and say, ‘Yes, you’re right, but I don’t give a s*** and I’ll still pick Handre Pollard over Finn Russell because I want to win’. But when people question my honesty, that’s not OK.

‘My close friends would send me WhatsApp messages saying, ‘Are you OK buddy?’ My old headmaster even got in touch. I think 80 per cent of the country backed me but the rest of the world hated me. 

‘I hate the fact that overseas people hate me. I’m actually quite a sensitive guy. People think I’m a bully. I’m not. Ask anybody that knows me. I liked it when I was known as the happy guy that people saw at the World Cup. I wish I could be known as that guy again.’

Erasmus said he and Lions coach Warren Gatland (above) did not shake hands after the series

Erasmus disappeared from the public gaze and he even disappeared from his own players. He locked himself in his room and, until now, has not spoken publicly since the video appeared online. His reputation had been shot to pieces but if South Africa had lost the second Test then the damage would have been irreparable.

‘Before that second Test I was crying in my room. I cried out of fear. I was afraid. If we had lost the second Test can you imagine the s*** I would have got from my own people? 

‘I would have been the guy who messed it up. I would have been finished. It was the scariest night of my career. The most intense week of my life. I was too nervous to get on the bus with the players. I drove in a separate car.

‘I knew the players backed me. They believed me. If you heard our conversations that week, you would know it was going to be one of the most physical Test matches ever. You could feel the tension at the stadium. Except for the guys I know from Munster, all the Lions players thought I was an a**hole. 

Me and Warren didn’t even shake hands. We hadn’t had a single function together on the tour because of Covid. I was never as relieved in my life after we won the second Test. That match was 100 minutes long but for me it just went like this [he clicks his fingers].’ The result saved Erasmus’s skin in his own country. 

His international image had been battered but, after South Africa clinched the series in the final kick of the final Test, Erasmus’s reputation as a national hero lived on. He toured with South Africa in the autumn and received World Rugby’s verdict of his 12-month stadium ban while at the team hotel in Teddington, before they played England. ‘Do you think Manu Tuilagi will read this interview?’ he asks.

‘After that match, Joe Marler sent me a bottle of wine. That was lekker because me and Joe Marler are the same kind of guy. We are not suit-and-tie guys. But Manu Tuilagi gave our team manager a teddy bear and asked them to pass it on to me.

‘I still don’t know why. If he was calling me a cry baby, that’s funny, he got me. If he was taking the p***, I like that. If it was sincere and it was meant for my daughters, that’s kind. I would love to know.’

As the conversation nears its end, the cheeseboard has almost melted in the blistering sun. The waiter clears the plates and Erasmus makes a self-deprecating joke about putting on weight during his suspension. But I have one final question: winning the Lions tour should be the peak of a career so, given all of the adversity, did he still enjoy it?

‘Winning is lekker, man, but the biggest satisfaction in coaching is when players sit there and they start believing in something,’ he says. ‘They make a plan and you start seeing big men agreeing with each other. 

‘You walk into a room and five locks are sat there doing extra analysis. You walk into the changing room and players are crying together before a game. The scoreboard is lekker, winning the World Cup final is lekker, but standing there with the trophy, it’s not what gives me the kick. When we won that second Test with the gun against our head, we knew we had the series. 

‘The last week was a bit more normal, which was lekker, but then the tour is over and everyone is saying I screwed it up. When people are saying I ruined up the tour and I ruined rugby, I’m not proud of that. It’s awful. 

‘I’ve not spoken to Warren since and that’s sad. Very sad. We didn’t even say goodbye. I think he thinks I leaked the video and that makes me sad.

‘If you talk about Willie John McBride or Bill Beaumont who toured South Africa during apartheid, nobody remembers them for that. The negativity works its way out of the story over time. I know people will always connect me and that Lions series and that’s s***, but hopefully the legacy of rugby outlives everything else.’