SOUTH Africa coach Rassie Erasmus and his Wales counterpart Warren Gatland both found positives in the Springboks’ 41-13 victory in a one-off test at Twickenham but will want to fix some rustiness ahead of a tough series next month.
A depleted South Africa, who had four debutants in their match-day 23 and only five starters from their last outing, the Rugby World Cup final, managed five tries in a comfortable win in the end, though they were under the cosh for an hour.
“It was beneficial in terms of getting game time into guys like (hooker) Malcolm Marx, who has not played for nine months, (loose-forward) Kwagga Smith and the other Japanese-based players who stopped a while ago,” Erasmus told reporters.
“We knew it would be stop-start, there were lots of stupid errors and things that didn’t click but overall it was a goal achieved. It was good to give both (debutant) flyhalves a run in Jordan (Hendrikse) and Sacha (Feinberg-Mngomezulu).
“We dominated in the scrums but not necessarily the collisions. They (Wales) only scored one try but had other opportunities and we conceded some stupid penalties.”
South Africa now turns their attention to a two-test home series against Ireland where they will have several more of their first-choice players available, despite a lengthy injury list, for the first game on July 6.
Gatland put a positive spin on the result despite a seventh defeat in a row for his side, who only trailed 14-13 at halftime.
“We aren’t focussing on that (the losing run) at the moment. We are focusing on getting better as a squad. I’m happy with the pressure being on me,” Gatland said.
“There were lots of positives and lots of good things. We were under the pump with two yellow cards but we worked our way through that. We fixed some stuff defensively in terms of defending higher.
“I felt a few calls didn’t go our way which didn’t help our momentum. We switched off a little bit and allowed them to make a couple of breaks. We will work hard to address that.
“That’s down to experience. A lot of those players would have learnt a lot from it.”
Gatland will cut his squad to 34 players for the two-test tour of Australia, which gets underway on July 6.
