Springboks head coach Rassie Erasmus was keen to keep his team’s feet on the ground after the win over the Barbarians and insists tougher games are set to come.
South Africa scored eight tries in a comfortable victory over the invitational side as they blew Robbie Deans’ troops away at DHL Stadium in Cape Town on Saturday.
Malcolm Marx, Cheslin Kolbe, Vincent Tshituka (2), Jan Hendrik Wessels, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Lood de Jager and Damian de Allende got tries in a dominant showing.
Not getting carried away
However, after the triumph, head coach Erasmus kept a lid on their celebrations, despite several inexperienced internationals grabbing their chance with both hands.
We won’t get carried away with this performance,” he stressed.
“Certainly, some of the newer guys showed us that they can do it at this level, but we’ll layer them in.
“We know who is going to play in Italy one and two, and certainly by the end of the Georgia game, which will be a grind, we’ll have a group of 45, 50 that have had some game time.”
The conditions could easily have impacted the quality of the game but the Springboks still managed to rack up over 50 points, which pleased stand-in captain Jesse Kriel.
He singled out Aphelele Fassi, Kolbe and Arendse for individual praise as a rainy evening in Cape Town refused to hinder the showing of the home team’s lethal players.
“We came in here to be bold and positive and not let the conditions affect us and keep the ball in hand and I thought we looked dangerous on turnover ball,” he insisted.
“I thought we looked dangerous when we got the ball into guys like Aphelele Fassi, Kurt-Lee Arendse and Cheslin Kolbe’s hands. They’re special rugby players, they can make something out of nothing, and we saw that today.”
Italy next in Pretoria
Erasmus said his troops were looking forward to the drier conditions that can be expected at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria on Saturday in their first Test against IAtaly.
“Some of the half gaps and some of the line breaks we made would have stuck if the weather had been drier,” said the coach.
“We can’t wait to play on a dry pitch and improve on our attack.
“We want to get better, the next three matches we’ll be trying to focus on us before we hit the Castle Lager Rugby Championship.”
