Matt Williams says that Rassie Erasmus ‘bullied’ him with his X post showing the former’s win rate during his time as Scotland coach.
The outspoken pundit has repeatedly criticised the Springboks’ and Erasmus’ tactics, particularly his ‘Bomb Squad’ ploy, which sees him load the bench up with forwards.
Williams has dubbed it as against the spirit of the game and says it discriminates against backs.
Williams and Erasmus feud
Earlier this month, the former Scotland head coach hit out at the tactics the Springboks and Lions deployed during the 2021 Test series.
“Let’s go back to South Africa, the South African tour was one of the worst tours ever, the worst games of international rugby I think I’ve ever seen,” he told Off the Ball.
“The way that both management teams conducted themselves was disgraceful.
“Rassie was running on the field as a water carrier. There was a leaked video criticising referees, ringing people up, and the style of rugby was an abomination.
“All they did was kick across the field and chase it. It was, it was not played in a good spirit.
“It was aggressive, I have no problem with it being aggressive but it wasn’t played in the spirit of rugby.”
Matt Williams: B&I Lions restored ‘absolutely tarnished’ image after ‘disgraceful’ Springboks series
Erasmus responded on the social media platform X, posting a screenshot of the Australian’s win record as Scottish head coach.
“Matt Williams, the rugby union coach, had a 17.65% win percentage during his tenure coaching Scotland. He coached the team in 17 matches, winning only 3 of them. Two of those wins were against Tier 2 nations, Japan and Samoa, according to Wikipedia,” the text in the image read.
Erasmus’ caption on the post read: “Heal Sir Matt.”
Williams responded, writing: “Hi Rassie, playing the man and not the ball again? Always the sign of weak argument.”
Rassie Erasmus and Matt Williams feud heats up as Springboks boss accused of ‘playing the man again’
Rassie bullied me
Speaking on Off the Ball for the first time since the spat, the ex-Scotland boss claimed that Erasmus bullied him and said that he didn’t address the criticism he made.
“My son rang me up and said: ‘What did you say about Rassie Erasmus?’ I said to him: ‘I was talking about the Lions, what do you mean?’,” Williams said when asked about the feud.
“He came out and put up some coaching percentages, and I don’t even know what I’ve done.
“Well really, what Rassie was doing was just bullying me. Just trying to say: ‘Well, your opinion doesn’t count’, because this is what happened in a couple of years in Scotland and it didn’t address the issue.
“Surely the best coach in the world’s got something better to do than listen to what I’m saying.”
Meanwhile, the 65-year-old was over the moon about the Wallabies’ shock 22-38 victory over the Springboks at Ellis Park.
Even though he didn’t have faith in Joe Schmidt’s charges after going down 22-0 after 20 minutes.
Williams revealed that at that point, he decided to head off to bed and only learnt of the result the next morning.
“The last time we won in Johannesburg was in 1963, so I gotta make the most of this whole weekend, after the last 20 years where everything I’ve said has been a disaster about Australian rugby,” he added.
“It started just after midnight here. When it was at 22-nil, I went to bed. I said, I can’t watch this and I woke up in the morning and put the radio on and the Wallabies won, I said: ‘This can’t be true’.”
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