Rassie Erasmus admitted that the Springboks have “a lot of things put right” after they suffered a 33-16 defeat in theirTest against the All Blacks at Ellis Park in Johannesburg on Saturday.
Despite holding a slender 13-12 lead at half-time, the world champions were totally outplayed in the second half as the men in black eventually outscored them by five tries to one.
That means that the All Blacks take a 1-0 lead in Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series and Erasmus expects a much better effort from his players in next weekend’s second Test between the arch-rivals at DHL Stadium in Cape Town.
“We have been in many catastrophic situations in our lives,” he said. “We lost the first Test against the British & Irish Lions [in 2021] and everyone said it was a catastrophe.
‘We have been in a lot of catastrophic situations’
“We lost the first pool game against New Zealand in the World Cup [in 2019] and everyone said that was catastrophic, so we have been in a lot of catastrophic situations.
“We’re now in a position where if we want to win the series we have to win three games on the trot. So, without doubt, it puts them in a very good position which they thoroughly deserve.
“Now we have to go to Cape Town and try and win there. If we do, it’s all level, but we still have to win three matches in a row. I wouldn’t say it’s catastrophic because there is a way out, and that’s winning three matches on the trot.”
Erasmus believes South Africa were the architects of their own downfall as the committed too many errors which were induced by New Zealand’s excellence.
“We were thoroughly beaten by a team that is now number one in the world – it’ll be nice to go into the next game as the underdogs,” he joked.
“I think we were dominant in the scrums, but it doesn’t help you if you’re dominant in one or two parts of the game. The All Blacks were more dominant in most parts of the game.
“I’m not going to butter it up with that cliché and say we’re going to learn from this and get better. We didn’t need to learn from this; we knew what we had to do on the day – we didn’t do it.”
Erasmus highlighted some key moments as being turning points: the Boks trailed by three points (19-16) in the 58th minute and were pressuring the All Blacks’ scrum when they conceded a penalty on their own feed at the set-piece.
“Even if we had kicked over that scrum penalty and we won we still made a helluva lot of errors,” he said.
‘I’m not going to say we learnt a lot of things from this match’
“But it wasn’t a wake-up call. There were just so many things that we did wrong and that New Zealand did right – so I’m not going to say we learnt a lot of things from this match.
“There would have been a lot of things we’d have to put right even if we had scratched through this match with a one-point win.
“We didn’t play well. Against a class team like New Zealand, if you don’t convert, they give you a proper hiding.
“With hindsight, there were a lot of things we didn’t convert; I think there were two or three big moments when we let the game go away from us. Not because we wanted to or because we wanted to make those errors but because New Zealand forced those on to us by being really intense and sharp.”
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The All Blacks’ Greatest Rivalry tour continues when they face the Lions in Johannesburg on Tuesday in the final match against a franchise team before next Saturday’s second Test in Cape Town.