Rassie Erasmus pinpoints what made the difference in tight Bok win

South Africa head coach Rassie Erasmus believes his side’s experience is what made the difference as South Africa were able to hold on to a 20-29 win over England at Twickenham’s Allianz Stadium.

In a match where the lead changed hands on a number of occasions, the world champions came out on the right side of the scoreline as they so often do. But Erasmus’ outfit found themselves under a lot of pressure in the final quarter of the match with prop Gerhard Steenekamp in the sin bin.

Despite waves of English attack in South Africa’s half, The Rugby Championship winners were able to repel Steve Borthwick’s side with various players coming to the fore with big tackles and turnovers to keep England scoreless in the final quarter.

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In a match he described as “competitive as hell,” Erasmus feels that it was the fact that this Springboks outfit have found themselves in similar positions in the past which helped them get over the line in the end.

This experience is what allowed the players to keep “calm heads” in the closing stages to maintain their status as the number one side in the world.

“I definitely think it’s experience,” Erasmus said when analysing how the Boks were able to close out the match. “I think the team that we put out there has played together a lot in important games and most of them played in the last match against Argentina for The Rugby Championship.

“Getting cards is not something that we’re proud of, but hanging in there while we’ve got a card, that definitely takes some character and planning from the other coaches and the guys running the specific areas- defence, lineout, Vincent [Koch] going to loosehead, without him going to loosehead we would have gone to uncontested scrums which would have meant we would go to 13 men. So then we would have struggled to keep them out as they were really playing well.

“I do think calm heads, which weren’t always in the coaches’ box, but the players on the field were pretty much cool, calm and handled it with experience.”

Despite the result, Erasmus was not overly pleased with the reigning World Cup winners’ display, but knows a nine-point victory at the Allianz Stadium is not to be sniffed at.

“Last week we had a good winning margin, this game, again, does the score really reflect how close the game was?” he said.

“It was a one-try game, penalty kicks here and there.

“Overall, when you play at Twickenham and say you’re not happy with the performance and beat them by nine points, we’re arrogant. It wasn’t fantastic. But we’re content.”