The Breakdown | Love or hate him, Erasmus misses nothing in rugby’s ‘Greatest Rivalry’ thriller

Late changes to South Africa’s team smacked of mind games, but reinvigorated New Zealand remain in the hunt

The margins are slim in South Africa this past fortnight and not just on the scoreboard. According to aviation experts, one of the two planes flying over the stadium in Cape Town just before kick-off on Saturday came within 12 to 14 metres of hitting the top of the stand which, depending on your perspective, either ranks as highly-skilled piloting or the most gratuitous of matchday stunts.

Something similar could be said, as it happens, about Rassie Erasmus’s ongoing selectorial high jinks. His initial starting XV announced for the second Test bore about as much resemblance to the one that ultimately took the field as Erasmus did to the late, great Dolly Parton, with no fewer than six of the original lineup missing. It had the desired result in terms of South Africa levelling up the four-Test series at 1-1 but was yet another example of Erasmus toying with the game’s supposed conventions.