Rassie Erasmus says the Springboks came away from Saturday's 43-0 Nations Championship win over Wales at Kings Park with encouraging lessons, despite acknowledging that slippery conditions contributed to a series of handling errors throughout the game.
The seven-try bonus-point victory was South Africa's third consecutive win in the Nations Championship, maintaining their position at the top of the Southern Hemisphere standings. It also extended their shutout of Wales to two straight Tests — the previous meeting ended 73-0 in Cardiff in November.
Erasmus pointed to the wet surface as a factor in the Boks not playing to their full attacking potential. "It was really slippery. During the warm-up you could feel it's greasy, so it's tough to play an expansive, pretty game in weather like that, and against a team that really wanted to defend," he said. "You could tell they're up for the defence, so to get 43 points and keep them to nil, we're satisfied with that."
The coach assessed the performance across multiple departments, noting improvement from the previous week's win over Scotland in particular around defence and set-piece. "Our defence was better than last week. We worked really hard on that, and then our set-piece was really solid, but there were a lot of handling errors. I think some guys handled the pressure of Test-match rugby a little bit better than we did last week."
Erasmus added that across all three matches the squad had shown incremental gains. "Every game we got a little bit better" — evaluating progress not just in collective units but at an individual player level as well.
The Springboks came through the match without any injuries. Erasmus will now select a 26-man squad for the tour to South America, while a group of 15 or 16 players remains in South Africa under members of the coaching staff to begin preparation for the Rugby Championship clashes against New Zealand in August and September.