Rassie Erasmus concerned about player burnout, reiterates call for global calendar

Since South Africa's exit from Super Rugby in 2020, their international stars that feature in the United Rugby Championship are effectively playing 12 months of the year.

Erasmus' rotation policy helps ease the load on those individuals, but the Boks boss has previously stated that he would like to see the Rugby Championship played at the same time as the Six Nations.

That competition has been postponed this year with the Springboks instead hosting the All Blacks for three Tests before they go head-to-head in a fourth clash on neutral soil.

To prepare for that series, South Africa have headed to South America to take on Argentina and Erasmus once again stated that he would like to see the schedule altered.

"I'm not scared or shy to say the schedule of the Rugby Championship or Greatest Rivalry or Argentina, why that can't be moved to February to the Six Nations block - everything would be in sync," he told reporters.

"I think syncing the international calendar [would help], but there are a lot of logistical problems that I probably don't know about and understand because I'm not 100 per cent in the boardrooms."

In many ways, Argentina are in a similar position to the Springboks with many of their best players plying their trade in Europe.

As a result, Los Pumas head coach Felipe Contepomi has also been forced to rotate in order to not put too much strain on the players' bodies.

"For Argentina, Felipe and I are good friends, I know him well, and I understand his frustrations," he said.

"He's got it right a few times, he's knocked us over, New Zealand was beaten here, last year in the second game we won by two points.

"I guess this weekend I think Argentina have got 15 players out and we've got about 15 players out, so we are going the route of rotating and keeping guys fresh, and hopefully in the crunch matches when it gets to the World Cup or Nations Championship play-off times or Greatest Rivalry times, hopefully we peak.

"Argentina are more or less in the same boat and if you don't rotate like Felipe is doing and we are doing, the players will definitely burn out.

"I think he thinks the same way as we do."

Saturday's clash with the Boks will be Argentina's first game since their controversial Nations Championship encounter against England.

Tomas Albornoz has been cited after making physical contact with referee Angus Gardner in the aftermath of a fraught contest.

Erasmus does not expect a repeat of those scenes after suggesting that they were a "one-off".

He said: "We know Argentina well, we've played them twice every year apart from this year. We know their players, they know us, some of our players play with them in French clubs, some play with them in Japan.

"What happened in the previous game regarding refereeing, it's not for us to comment on that. We've got Christophe Ridley as the referee this week. Obviously, the new protocols make it quite tough to communicate with the referee before the game.

"We have experienced Argentina as a team. I think it was a one-off what happened the other week, we've never experienced them to be a team that's negative or too feisty.

"Obviously, they're very hard men and physical guys but we've never found them to be unsportsmanlike in games."

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