The 2024 edition of The Rugby Championship is scheduled to kick off this weekend, with a couple of familiar faces to Irish rugby fans set to face in Brisbane on Saturday.
Joe Schmidt will take charge of Australia for the first time in this competition, with the Wallabies hosting Rassie Erasmus' South Africa in the competition's opening fixture. Of course, those two men know each other quite well from their time in Ireland, where Schmidt coached the national team while Erasmus was at Munster.
South Africa come into this fixture having drawn their test series with Ireland last month, with the two games featuring no shortage of drama.
That included a questionable disallowed James Lowe try in the first test, a decision Joe Schmidt was quick to raise ahead of this weekend's game.
Speaking to reporters in recent days, he suggested that decision was an example of the decisions the Springboks often find going their way during the biggest games.
There was a bit of controversy with James Lowe’s try being disallowed. It’s not the first time for South Africa, they tend to get a bit of luck from that perspective.
They don’t need too much luck to fall their way, they make a lot of their own luck with the quality of player and the connectedness they have.
They have guys who have played a lot of Test match footy together and that breeds confidence and almost an unspoken trust among players – they know what each other are going to do.
Those comments were never going to go unnoticed in the South African camp.
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Rassie Erasmus Rubbishes Schmidt Comments About James Lowe Try
Rassie Erasmus is someone who is not afraid to speak his mind in the public forum, although he would attempt to brush off this apparent attempt to influence this weekend's officials from Joe Schmidt.
Speaking ahead of Saturday’s game, he said he expected the Kiwi to put pressure on referee Luke Pearce, as well as his own players, in the buildup to the fixture. He also suggested that his team got no more luck than any other test side, most notably Ireland.
I know Joe very well, he’s a real old-school coach. He’s disciplined.
I believe he’s going to put pressure on the new players, on the old players, and on the referees. He’s a very good, hard-working coach, who knows what he wants.
We all know that’s not true, that’s not the case with South Africa, and I think it’s not going to work with Luke Pearce.
He’s an experienced referee, and he won’t fall for something like that, and we all know that it’s definitely not true that we get a rub of the green. I mean, Ireland won 17 games in a row. I think they got some green rub too!
It is clear that both Schmidt and Erasmus are keen to employ mind games ahead of this weekend's fixture, although the Australia head coach would likely need to lean heavier on this aspect of the contest due to to relative levels of quality in these two teams.
It should make for a fascinating game.
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