Rassie Erasmus says All Blacks forced Springboks into costly errors in Ellis Park defeat

South Africa coach Rassie Erasmus said the Springboks were beaten by a combination of their own mistakes and New Zealand’s relentless pressure in Saturday’s 33-16 defeat by the All Blacks at Ellis Park.

The Springboks controlled periods of the Test but repeatedly failed to turn their possession and territorial dominance into points. Several errors came inside New Zealand’s 22, including a knock-on by hooker Malcolm Marx as South Africa appeared certain to score from a driving maul.

South Africa were also unable to capitalise on a strong scrum performance, with Erasmus acknowledging that their superiority in one area was not enough against a team that dominated elsewhere.

“We were thoroughly beaten by a team that is now No 1 in the world – it’ll be nice to go into the next game as the underdogs,” Erasmus joked after the match.

“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.”

The coach rejected the idea that the defeat simply offered South Africa a routine learning opportunity, insisting the team already knew what was required before kick-off.

“I’m not going to butter it up with that cliche 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 a key moment in the second half when the Springboks were trailing 19-16 in the 58th minute. South Africa had been applying pressure at a scrum, but conceded a penalty on their own feed, allowing the All Blacks to escape.

He said that even if South Africa had taken the resulting opportunity and gone on to win, their performance would still have contained too many errors.

“Even if we had kicked over that scrum penalty and we won, we still made a helluva lot of errors,” he said.

“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.”

Erasmus added that the Springboks would have had significant work to do even if they had secured a narrow victory.

“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.”

The coach also praised the All Blacks for the intensity with which they challenged South Africa, saying New Zealand had actively created the pressure that led to many of the errors.

“With hindsight, there were a lot of things we didn’t convert,” Erasmus said.

“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 errors on to us by being really intense and sharp.”

South Africa will now turn their attention to the second Test in Cape Town, where they will look to respond to the Ellis Park setback.

New Zealand, meanwhile, must face the Lions in a midweek match in their final fixture against the United Rugby Championship franchises.