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Springbok Women performance coach Swys de Bruin admitted his side were punished for basic errors and ill-discipline in their 50-20 defeat to second-ranked Canada on Saturday.
De Bruin said the Bok Women learned a valuable lesson about playing the world's best team and how soft mistakes are punished.
"We gave away four soft tries and that was 28 points gone," said the coach.
"Against a team like Canada, who is really skilful and have a good style of rugby, that is never going to give you the result you want. Also, six of the first seven penalties against us were for breakdown infringements and that is something we will have to look at this coming week.
"We worked with Alain Rolland during the week in order to be accurate in those areas, but the application of the breakdowns was different to what our players trained in the week and we could not adapt.
"That is a great lesson for us though, as the same thing will happen at the World Cup, where each match will have its own dynamics. So, in that regard, today was good for us, showing us flaws in our approach."
De Bruin said the Bok Women had a number of good moments as well, especially in the second half.
"Last time we played Canada they won 66-7 and today showed that we are closing the gap," he said.
"The improvement is real and the whole purpose of this match was to show us there our weaknesses are, and we are we doing well.
"The same will apply next weekend and when we play the Black Ferns XVs in a couple of weeksâ™ time. If we learn from the lessons and eliminate them, we will keep improving as we get closer to the Rugby World Cup."
Bok captain Nolusindiso Booi said the pressure of playing against a top-ranked team like Canada may have contributed to some of the unforced errors.
"We prepared well, but today we did not always apply ourselves well and that is disappointing," said Booi.
"However, we saw that across the squad, the players got better and better as the game went on. We will go back, work hard and give it another go next weekend."
