In a sport where bruises heal but margins rarely forgive, the Springboks have once again pulled a rabbit out of the rugby ruck.
Gone are the days of coaches barking from the sidelines with clipboards in hand or huddling in dimly lit video rooms post-practice.
Today, in the age of split-second precision and battlefield IQ, Rassie Erasmus has strapped innovation to four wheels and driven it straight onto the training pitch—literally.
The Springboks are innovating when it comes to training and analysis 🧠
Just another way that Rassie Erasmus and his coaching staff are looking to stay ahead of the game 👏#SSRugby pic.twitter.com/fgoF4ASXj1
— SuperSport Rugby (@SSRugby) July 4, 2025
As the Springboks gear up to honour the 30th anniversary of their fairytale 1995 Rugby World Cup triumph, there’s a striking contrast between the methods of old and the tech-savvy tactics now employed.
Back then, coach Kitch Christie orchestrated his squad’s tactical symphony with nothing more than grit, whiteboards, and black coffee. Fast forward to 2025, and Erasmus, ever the rugby scientist, is tweaking the Springbok machine with a remote control in one hand and a tactical blueprint in the other.
To describe Rassie Erasmus as a coach who “thinks outside the box” is like calling Siya Kolisi a decent captain—an outrageous understatement. This is a man who’s turned the rulebook into origami, folding and bending it to design a new rugby reality.
Enter: the golf cart. But not just any golf cart. This one hums around training like a high-tech chariot, armed with a massive TV screen and the power to beam live footage straight into the players’ brains like rugby’s answer to The Matrix.
Springbok flyhalf Handre Pollard makes a point with the help of the golf cart. Photo: Twitter/X
“We obviously don’t use the golf cart to play golf,” grinned Erasmus, part inventor, part provocateur.
“We’ve turned it into a mobile television. The video footage of our training sessions is on there. We didn’t really know how it works, but Paddy Sullivan (Springbok Performance Analyst) used it in France, and Tony Brown (Springbok Attack Coach) used it quite often in Japan.”
Of course, this wheeled wizardry isn’t unique to the Boks.
“So, we are not the first team to use it, I know the Sharks also used it. We are extremely fortunate to get one,” added Rassie.
“It makes us more productive. The players don’t have to get onto a bus to a meeting room and then go back to the training field and forget stuff. It’s on the field and we can immediately do things.”
In other words, instead of rewinding and replaying errors in sterile boardrooms, the Boks now dissect their play in the heat of the moment, with grass underfoot and blood still boiling from contact.
Springbok Performance analyst Paddy Sullivan, the rugby technologist behind the scenes, described the cart as a real-time transmission tool.
Paddy Sullivan Photo: Twitter/X
“When we review our attack plans … we can give it to them immediately,” he explained.
“It cuts time in the hotels and meeting rooms. It gives them a new dynamic to training and it just keeps them interested.”
In an era where player focus is as fragile as a winger’s ribs in a Bok scrum session,Sullivan emphasises the tool’s mental value as much as the tactical one.
“Tony [Brown] loves it. It’s something that he has worked with throughout his coaching career. It’s not a gimmick and brings an extra dimension.
The main thing stays the main thing, but if we can win a percentage and it helps us here or there then that’s the main part of it.”
It’s not just for the flashy backline choreography either. This digital device zooms in on grunt work in the engine room—scrums, mauls, breakdowns.
“Coach Daan [Human] was able to correct on the fly what was going on in those scrums,” Sullivan revealed.
But let’s not pretend the Boks don’t have a little fun while pushing the envelope.
“It’s a very flashy piece of equipment. The mags [fancy wheels on the golf cart] come from Despatch—they are Rassie Specials,” Sullivan quipped with a grin, giving a nod to the coach’s Eastern Cape roots and mischievous rugby mind.
In a sport where fractions of a second and inches of territory often spell the difference between agony and ecstasy; Erasmus continues to chase the edge like a flanker sniffing out a loose ball
Whether it’s laser-guided kicking plans, fluorescent bib codes, or now, a mobile media lab on wheels, the Springbok brains trust refuses to let tradition put a ceiling on transformation.
As they chase more glory in a post-World Cup era, one thing’s for certain—under Rassie’s leadership, the Boks will never be stuck in reverse. They’ll be charging forward—sometimes literally—TV screen blazing, wheels spinning, and rugby intellect firing on all cylinders.
