'I’m not Jaco Johan, I’m Johan Erasmus.' Director of rugby RassieRugby has dismissed claims that he is the one running the Jaco Johan/thenosyone987 Twitter account.
On Tuesday, Erasmus raised his concern with how Cheslin Kolbe had been played in the air, an incident that was overlooked by officials. He also explained why Mako Vunipola action of recklessly picking Kolbe up from the ground was such a misstep.
“And as to why I’m so active on Twitter, well, I actually just retweeted two or three tweets that I thought was accurate and I tweeted twice,” he said. “I thought the way Cheslin was picked up off the ground could have been a serious injury. As director of rugby, the medical department is also part of that role and we have the BokSmart programme aimed at player safety.
“We teach our primary school children from any age-group level to leave a player alone if they are injured, and we wouldn’t want our Springbok players to go and start picking up Lions players this weekend if they are lying on their back injured. So, I just felt it was an important one to get out there.”
Meanwhile, former British & Irish Lions coach Clive Woodward, in his column for a UK publication, wrote that Erasmus ‘needs to butt out and let Nienaber coach’.