Rassie Erasmus has acknowledged that not every player in his experimental squad rose to the occasion against Scotland, but maintained the 42-28 Nations Championship victory at Loftus on Saturday night was exactly the examination he needed to set.

"This is the test which some of the guys needed," Erasmus said. "Not a tier two nation … a tier one nation that really, really are classy."

Scotland arrived in Pretoria having beaten France and England during the Six Nations, where they finished third, and backed up an away win over Argentina the previous week. The Boks ran in six tries to Scotland's four, but their defence was notably porous during spells in the second half.

Erasmus pointed to the sheer volume of inexperience in his matchday squad as the root cause of those lapses. Twelve of the players carried ten caps or fewer, with a further five sitting at 20 caps or below. "Cohesion would always be a problem," he said. "That you could see in the defence when we made some subs at the end."

He was blunt about the implications: some players have played themselves into contention, others have not. "Now we know some guys need a lot of work to stay in and some guys made it."

Erasmus also addressed the early departure of Ethan Hooker, clarifying it was disciplinary rather than a head injury concern. "His mouth got pinged … there wasn't a head knock with him."

The coach defended the deliberate risk of fielding such a disjointed combination against quality opposition rather than waiting for a lower-intensity fixture. "Sometimes we must put our personal goals, or how many games we've won in a row, or even this championship on the line to know who can do what," he said. "If you don't make those calls you would never know. You're always going to wait until you play a team that's not of this calibre."

He acknowledged the Loftus crowd was uncomfortable at stages when Scotland applied pressure, but framed that discomfort as part of the process. "For those guys to feel the crowd going quiet when it's not going that well, they must handle that kind of pressure — that's the only way we can ever learn."

Erasmus was candid that the performance was far from polished. "We played with a team that's disjointed, that hasn't played together in a lot of combinations. Some of the guys just never played at this level with the guys who were next to them." He nonetheless expressed confidence that the broader South African public understood the intent behind the selection approach.