Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus said his team were “dog s**t”, and captain Siya Kolisi issued an apology after the Springboks collapsed to a shock 38-22 defeat against the Wallabies in Joburg on Saturday.
Kolisi described the defeat as unacceptable and slammed his team for taking their foot off the pedal after they surrendered a 22-0 lead against a Wallaby side who defied the odds to topple the world champions.
An embarrassed Erasmus said he could not butter up the loss and said his team were really bad on the day.
SA started like a house on fire and scored 22 points in the opening 18 minutes, but they imploded inexplicably when they conceded 38 unanswered points.
“We let ourselves down today on things that we worked on, like discipline and the breakdown,” said Kolisi.
“The Boks want to thank everyone who supported us and we are sorry about the performance. But we will come again next week [in the second Test in Cape Town].
“Australia definitely won the breakdown battle and we have to take that on the chin. It is unacceptable the way we performed after starting like that and then taking our foot off the pedal.
“When it came to the breakdown, we would fight and get into Australia’s 22 and then they would steal the ball. It is something we knew they would do because they are good at it.
“It is hard to put in words, but credit to the Australian team because they played really well. Though we started well, we didn’t keep building. Our heads dropped and our shoulders slumped. That is disappointing because we know what’s expected when you wear this jersey.”
Erasmus said his team had been tactically outplayed.
“This is probably one of the most embarrassing press conferences I’ve done in a while,” he said.
We as coaches got it terribly wrong. It wasn’t just tactical — they also physically dominated us.
— Rassie Erasmus
“I can butter this up to sound cool and respectful, but we were just really dog s**t on the day. The Wallabies were good, but we made them better with our performance.
“To be 22-0 up, we did the same against Italy, when 28-3 up, and then we let teams back in. We gave them one or two soft tries. They beat us in the line-outs.
“For the first 25 minutes we were good at the breakdown, but after Kolisi got injured and Marco van Staden had to go for an HIA [head injury assessment] they bullied us there.
“We as coaches got it terribly wrong. It wasn’t just tactical — they also physically dominated us. The longer the game went on, the stronger they got. At altitude, that’s supposed to be us. It shows what Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt is building there.
“Grant Williams had so many breaks, Manie had so many breaks, Edwill van der Merwe too. Their kick-to-ruck ratio was really good — we only kicked nine times in the second half.
“Maybe the players felt there was space, but that’s coaching, that’s on us. We must still build the innings. Twenty-two nil is not winning a game — it ended up losing by almost 20 points.
“The saddest thing is five log points for them and we didn’t even fight back to take the bonus point away. So we’re on zero, they’re on five.”
Erasmus said the Bok management team would take a hard look at themselves after the defeat.
“From now until next Saturday we’ll take a lot of flak, but when we take the credit when we’re doing well, then we must take the flak when we’re doing badly. We are very disappointed, feeling bad for our supporters and our players.”
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