Ireland legend Peter O’Mahony has revealed some of the unique traits Rassie Erasmus possesses, which has helped him to become one of the best coaches in the modern game.
The 52-year-old has guided the Springboks to back-to-back world titles, with many of the things he did at Munster being taken home to South Africa when he became the national team’s director of rugby in December 2017.
Erasmus joined the Irish heavyweights midway through 2016 and departed 18 months later but, despite that relatively short time at the province, he still left a significant impression on O’Mahony.
Appearing on The Good, The Bad and The Rugby podcast alongside ex-England players James Haskell and Mike Tindall, he was asked by the latter: “Is he as nuts as he comes across?”
O’Mahony responded: “Yeah, he’s completely mental, like”, before explaining why he made a significant impact, particularly at what was an extremely difficult time for Munster.
‘Exactly what Munster needed’
“He’s mad but was exactly what we needed at the time,” the former Ireland captain said.
“When he came in Axel (Anthony Foley) was there and obviously when Axel passed we were completely lost. He hadn’t really planned on coaching at all.
“Even when Axel was there, he was up in the HPC (high performance centre) and he would look on – he wouldn’t be on the pitch.
“Then Axel passed away and Rassie had to take the forwards, but he was just the exact coach we needed at the time. We needed someone to get rid of the bull**** that was in the club.
“He went hard at basics, he went hard at people turning up to training properly and he was just the tonic Munster needed at the time. He was brilliant.
“Unbelievably different way of going about things, if you compare him to a Joe Schmidt or Andy Farrell – a completely different character – but incredibly impressive style.”
Erasmus a brilliant motivator
O’Mahony also revealed what specifically made him so effective, particularly in the man-management and motivational aspects of coaching.
“There were a couple of things,” he said.
“He takes a huge amount of pressure off the players, so he’ll take all the media pressure off, there would be zero media pressure on you because he’ll be creating hassle on it, so it’ll all be directed at him or if there’s a loss, he’ll take it on the nose.
“The other thing is that his emotional side of winding you up for stuff is incredibly good, he’ll have stories that happened to him in his career, he’ll have experiences.
“I’ve heard some of the stuff he’s said to the South Africans in some of their documentaries that he said with us, incredibly powerful stories and stuff you couldn’t but react to in a positive way.
“At the same time, you compare him to Johann [van Graan], and Johann had a very open-door policy, whereas Rassie’s door was firmly closed.
“He would open the door if you had a serious problem, it was, ‘try and sort it out a few times yourself and then come to me’. But he was brilliant even for us.”
Rassie’s no BS
Haskell put it to the Ireland great that Erasmus was “dictatorial” and was the person “definitely in charge”, to which the 36-year-old duly responded: “There was no question there”.
However, it was ultimately part of the South African’s ability to rid the team of any potential excuses, just like he has done in the Springboks set-up, as O’Mahony explained.
“I remember when he first came in and he said: ‘What do you need? What’s going on at the club?’ He set up stuff like family boxes. As good as Munster is at stuff, there was no partners’ boxes,” he said.
“He put on a creche for guys with kids. He was like, ‘What do you need to not worry about anything else so you could perform at the weekend?’ We were like, ‘we need this, that and the other’, and he went, ‘done, I’ll sort that, you leave that with me’.
“No excuses, no bull****. There were fellas who used to spend time on the sideline with knocks on a Monday who didn’t fancy training, so he put a tag on them.
“You can see the same policy with South Africa, if you can’t train Monday, you’re not available for selection for the weekend. You rock up Monday, even if you’re 60 per cent or 70 per cent, if you’re not on the pitch, you’re not being selected.”
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