Rassie Erasmus explains Jaco Peyper's role in improving the Boks' discipline

Peyper is a former world-class referee and only recently hung up his whistle having officiated at the 2023 Rugby World Cup last year.

Injury forced the 44-year-old off during the quarter-final clash between Argentina and Wales, which also ruled him out of the rest of the tournament.

Instead of returning to refereeing, Peyper retired and joined the Springboks set-up and has been helping the players around improving their discipline.

"He does one-on-ones with the players, with the captain, who was Pieter-Steph du Toit (against Wales), and vice-captain Jesse Kriel, and then the wingers on how to talk to the assistant referees," Erasmus told reporters.

"Also to the props on how to communicate those kind of things with the referees so since the World Cup we have changed our mindset around how we approach the officials.

"Even though we may be right, that doesn't mean you can be disrespectful towards referees and their assistants. I think that helped a lot, and having Peyper here now makes us understand even more how much pressure a referee is under.

"He told us the other day that they make 950 decisions or non-decisions during a game, and making 20 mistakes in a game is actually not that bad."

Peyper will also be helping the Boks with the law amendments which have been introduced by World Rugby.

They officially come into effect on July 1 but they were employed during the Springboks' clash with Wales at Twickenham last weekend.

That included the removal of the 'Dupont law' loophole and the controversial scrum amendment which prevents that set-piece being chosen following a free-kick.

World Rugby were accused of both depowering the scrum and targeting the Boks with that alteration, but Erasmus was not overly concerned when asked about them in his press conference.

"No it's not something big for us, I think there were two free-kicks against Wales and we had one against us," he said.

"You just have to decide; are you going to slow that free-kick down and kick an up and under? If it's inside your 22, are you going to kick it out? When it's close to the goal line, are you actually going to quick tap or are you going to do a set move - the old school moves?

"On the Dupont law, where the forwards must stand still - we haven't really done that where we advanced. It was really only France who did it, so that's not a big change.

"With the shot clock, they are pushing you at the lineout and at the scrum and they are making sure that you quicker in there.

"But all of that suits us, we still got a lot of scrums, we still got a lot of penalties and lineouts are still important so we can't really moan about any of the law updates."

READ MORE: Springboks shift full focus to Ireland after busy week of training