Rassie Erasmus reflects on 'valuable experience' of playing Wallabies in Australia

This was despite going down 42-38 in a thrilling encounter in Perth that had the Wallabies down to 11 players and referee Andrea Piardi on a cellphone to the TMO.

The result means Australia is undefeated in the five matches since Les Kiss took over as head coach. Erasmus stopped short of throwing in the 'lessons learned' cliche, instead saying that this group of players can take valuable experience from facing the Wallabies at home ahead of a potential Rugby World Cup quarterfinal against them next year.

"The matter of fact is Australia is a good team and they've definitely improved a lot since Les has been there," the storied coach told the press.

"They play at home. They're the World Cup hosts next year. We might strike them in a vital playoff game, and it's nice to have a taste of them tonight.

"So next year when we play them, we'll know a little bit more about each other. I'm not going to say 'lessons learned', but I think what happened tonight was a valuable experience."

Erasmus went on to explain his use of the Bok bench. On the 47th minute mark, the entire bench of Malcolm Marx, Ox Nche, Wilco Louw, Lood de Jager, Jasper Wiese, Morne van den Berg, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Quan Horn were thrown onto the pitch to try and turn the tide.

"We were reacting to the situation," reflected Erasmus.

"I mean, when you put a whole bench on, you were hoping to get a scrum here and there, but it was like 60 minutes and we didn't have a scrum on our ball.

"In the second half we were planning, I'll be honest with you, to put our big boys on, who were fresh, at the next scrum, our ball.

"But the scrums didn't happen, didn't happen, didn't happen. So after they scored another try, we decided, 'Okay, we'll have to roll the dice now. They're 20 points up. Something has to change the momentum in the game.' So, not pre-planned."