Erasmus's pushback against Rennie's scrum accusations is less about the substance of the claim and more about how it was delivered. His core argument: the AMS system exists precisely so that coaches raise officiating concerns through official channels rather than weaponising media narratives to pressure referees. Erasmus knows that ground well — he was sanctioned for doing something similar himself. The pointed edge to his response is the implicit equivalence he draws: Rennie criticising the Springboks' pre-match tactical substitutions as against the spirit of the game while simultaneously running a media campaign on scrum infringements is, in Erasmus's framing, just another form of gamesmanship. He says he has his own list of grievances about the All Blacks but is bound by the five-clip limit — a detail that underlines how deliberately he's positioning himself as the rule-follower here. His endorsement of Amashukeli as a referee who genuinely understands scrums reads as a pre-emptive move to neutralise any lingering narrative heading into the decider.