Erasmus has confirmed the Boks won't be staging any choreographed response to the Haka at Ellis Park — and he's asking the crowd to hold their noise until it's done. The reasoning is instructive: Tony Brown's presence on the coaching staff has reframed how the squad thinks about it. Where the Boks once tried to strategise around the Haka as a psychological threat to neutralise, Erasmus says they now understand it as something that fires up the All Blacks regardless of what the opposition does — so the energy is better spent on the kickoff plan. He also admits he's genuinely nervous for the match, which given the stakes of the inaugural RGR Test series opener, reads as candid rather than performative.