Victor Matfield identifies gap between experienced Boks and new players coming through

Having defeated the All Blacks in Baltimore on September 12 to clinch a 3-1 series victory in Rugby's Greatest Rivalry, the Boks took on Australia 13 days later in Perth.

Due to his dependence on several experienced players to turn around a 0-1 series deficit against New Zealand, Erasmus decided to make 13 changes to his starting XV for his team's final match before November's European conclusion to the inaugural Nations Championship.

That block will feature away matches against Italy, France and Ireland before finals weekend at Allianz Stadium, Twickenham, and Matfield feels that the planning ahead of that trip will include Erasmus accepting that "a few guys didn't come through" after getting their chance against Australia.

Down 24-17 at the interval, the Springboks went on to trail 42-17 before a late flourish against an opposition that at one stage was reduced to 11 players due to four overlapping yellow cards produced a 42-38 final result.

Matfield blamed South Africa's much-changed line-up for the defeat, but he insisted that the level of wholesale change wasn't pre-match arrogance from Erasmus. Asked on Rugby Rivals if the head coach had been arrogant with his selection, the retired talisman said: "I don't think so.

"Rassie picks his moment where is the focus and the focus was all on the Greatest Rivalry. That's what we wanted to win this year, and he got that right. He played the same teams for four weeks, something we haven't seen for a long time.

"He has always had belief in his squad. I just think if you look at certain positions, especially the front-row, it wasn't our second front-row, it was our third front-row [Zachary Porthen, Johan Grobbelaar and Jan-Hendrik Wessels]. And a few other positions as well at scrum-half as well, it was our fourth choice scrum-half [Herschel Jantjies].

"It's just guys that haven't had a chance to show what they can do. Rassie wanted to test them under pressure to see what they can do and where they stand in the rankings. And yeah, unfortunately, there's a few guys that did stood up and there's a few guys that didn't come through.

"It's never easy, but at some stage, if you plan for a World Cup and the next thing is to win the World Cup, we won the Greatest Rivalry and now we want to go for that three in a row, you have to give those guys a chance. So, last year it worked. This year it didn't work for us."

Matfield added: "We have been talking about the depth that we have got in South Africa, but it's just showing there's definitely a little gap between that very experienced team that's been through so many things and the new kids coming through.

"So yeah, well done to Australia. They came at the Boks in that first half, they dominated a lot of things. The first time in a long time the Boks lost the aerial battle as well. So yeah, well done to them and it's nice. I'm looking forward to the Bledisloe Cup now. It needs to be up there."

Matfield claimed he could sense things weren't fully at the level it needed to be in the lead up the match with Australia, a fixture where the Springboks stayed in Terrigal, a seaside town north of Sydney, before flying west to Sydney a few days before kick-off.

"It's young kids with a lot of talent that probably after the World Cup they need to step up and take over those positions. So, they need to be tested and the only way they will get better is to play in Test matches.

"Rassie has normally got that confidence. It wasn't just the changes. It would have been very hard if we picked our same guys to mentally be there but I could just see in the whole week's build up, I've seen a few things of the coaches where they were just like mentally it wasn't the same.

"The guys just dropped off a little bit, they took that breath and you know in international rugby, especially now that Australia is getting back, if you're five per cent off your game mentally then it's very difficult to win a game.

"These guys that played, remember they haven't played for five weeks. For five weeks they were just holding bags on tour, they haven't played. So it's not just that they were the second choice, but it's also they haven't played for five weeks most of these guys. So it was difficult but the Australians were good.

"If you think back last year about the Rugby Championship, it was probably one of the best we've ever seen. All the games were close, it was competitive, and that's what we want to see."

Former All Black John Kirwan referenced the post-game briefings given by the respective head coaches. "I listened to Les Kiss⦠And then I listened to Rassie and he said the Aussies deserve to win.

"But they asked him about Les Kiss and he said, 'Well, he's a detailed coach' and if you want to beat the Springboks, you have to win your lineouts, you have to at least get parity in the scrum and you got to get your high ball.

"For 65 minutes that's what they did and if you do that against South Africa then you can put them under pressure because if you don't put South Africa under pressure, then you're not going to win and that's what they did.

"It's really, really important to say that Australia were very, very detailed for 65 minutes and nailed those things that put South Africa under pressure."