South Africa’s win over Australia in Cape Town was about more than log points, it was about belief, admitted Springboks head coach Rassie Erasmus.
After an eight-Test winning streak was snapped at Ellis Park last weekend, Erasmus said the Springboks had been shaken by a rare stumble and needed to prove something to themselves as much as to their supporters.
The 30-22 victory was far from perfect. The Wallabies, coming off their famous triumph in Johannesburg, again pushed the Boks to the brink, with James O’Connor missing three late kicks that might have changed the outcome.
For Erasmus, though, what mattered most was the sight of his team back on the winning track.
“Well, probably the scoreboard,” he said when asked for his highlight of the game. “I don’t think we as a group underestimated Australia at all. We said it last week that those first 22 points they scored put the whole world on alert about how good they are. We found them extremely difficult to beat – I think the Lions did too in those two Test matches.
They missed two fairly vital penalties to be within seven points which would have made it really tight the last few minutes. After a loss you lose a little bit of belief. We’d won eight on the trot and then lost one, I think we’re now nine out of ten, but you do lose a little bit of belief.
“The big thing for us today was to try and win and not let them get a bonus point.”
Erasmus was blunt about just how poor South Africa had been at Ellis Park when asked to rate the Boks’ performance in Cape Town.
Oh wow. Last week [Ellis Park] I would say two or three for the second half,” he admitted. “Overall for this game, with the handling, I don’t think that was great but the conditions played a role. Their back three were fantastic and really elusive. I think a win can be a six or seven. We know it wasn’t a perfect performance, but sometimes just getting back onto the horse is important.
“With the kind of pressure we were under this weekend, I’ll give the team a seven.”
That pressure was compounded by the championship context. South Africa’s route to lifting the Rugby Championship title still depends on beating New Zealand away, and Erasmus was clear about the scale of that challenge.
“We’ve always had to go to New Zealand and beat them there twice if we want to have any chance,” he said. “So we’re back. We’ve got log points. They’re ahead of us, but overall, yeah, just happy with the win.”
The coach pushed back against suggestions that South Africa’s second-half struggles this year were a sign of fading fitness.
“I don’t think it’s fitness – definitely not,” he said. “Because they beat us last weekend, we were a bit tight. When the pressure came they thought, ‘hey, we’ve beaten these guys last week, we can just do it again.’ They went for the three points, we could also for the last kick just have gone for the poles, but we tried to make the points difference.
“Even if we’d won last weekend, we’d still have to go to New Zealand and beat them twice if we want to win the Rugby Championship. So we’re in it. After a loss, when it gets to those tense moments, it’s tough. That happened in 2018 as well and then we fixed it in 2019. It’s something we can fix, and I think we already fixed it today.”
