Rassie Erasmus: Errors against Wallabies won't stop Springboks' evolution

While the Boks' new possession-focused game initially brought success as they raced to a 22-0 lead against the Wallabies, their ambition eventually got exposed, and their errors and turnovers got punished.

Erasmus pointed out - somewhat ironically - that Australia's counter-attacking approach at Ellis Park mirrored the style the Boks used to great effect at the 2019 World Cup, but he insisted the Boks won't go back to their old ways, focusing instead on fixing mistakes and turning back to their core strengths when they need to.

The Boks want to be more dynamic with ball in hand and are working hard on achieving that under new attack coach Tony Brown, a project the Bok coach has no intentions of abandoning now.

"I feel Australia are playing pretty much like we did in 2019, defend, defend, and if you make an error, they will pounce on that," Erasmus said.

"We don't believe that's the way to win the next World Cup. We will never throw everything out; we've worked too hard over the last two or three years to get things in place. On Saturday, we just got overexcited, we felt that this is working and that we must put the foot on the accelerator, and we ran ourselves off our feet.

"I believe that it is a myth that defence tires you out. On defence, you don't have to worry about the ball. So you can actually rest on defence. But if you run yourself off your feet, when you have to defend after a turnover, you are all flat and altitude is gone.

"We were chasing our own tail, and they were really good, but we can't throw away all that hard work; it was one loss."

Erasmus said the team has already begun finding solutions in training this week, identifying where errors crept in and how to tighten up their execution.

"It's been a while since we lost. It's been a while since a game just ran away from us in seven minutes. It's not a lekker feeling when that happens," he said. "But by the first session on Monday, the answers started coming, and then we did attack today [Tuesday], and the answers started coming.

"We were 22 points up, and we thought 'This is easy', and then you get a shock and you get two or three concussions and it's not an excuse but we did lose Siya [Kolisi], Marco [van Staden], Kurt-Lee [Arendse] and Edwill [van der Merwe] so everything almost got compounded and then all of a sudden we were 14 points down and they were just putting down the hammer.

"It's very bad, not lekker to lose," he added, "but we have to have clarity. Tony [Brown] worked very well [at training] today, and we planned well yesterday with our kicking plan. The players on the field this week, I think they understand how we want to play the game."

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