Springboks coach: Win vs. England ‘not fantastic’

Rassie Erasmus said he was “content” with South Africa’s 29-20 win over England and hailed the performance of two-try hero Cheslin Kolbe.

The Springboks made it two from two in November with a hard-fought win over England at Twickenham. Erasmus said afterwards it wasn’t a perfect performance, but they were happy with the nine-point victory as they outscored the hosts four tries to two.

“We had a good winning margin,” Erasmus said. “So overall it wasn’t fantastic but we are content that we could beat them today.”

Central to the win was the performance of Kolbe, who scored a try in either half. He was also exceptional in defence. Erasmus was reluctant to talk him up post-match, but was keen to highlight some of his brilliant work away from the two tries he scored.

“I’m so nervous that I’m jinxing it, and I keep on saying he’s just a special player but it doesn’t seem to go to his head,” Erasmus said of Kolbe. “I think that’s probably one of the most important things in the world, that stuff doesn’t get to your head.

“I think the team also helps him a lot but one can’t praise him enough. It’s not always the glamorous things that he does. There’s a lot of off the ball work that he really does well and yeah, we can just be very fortunate that we have such a good crop of winners.”

When asked how they get on the right side of these matches, Erasmus said: “I definitely think it’s experience. I think with the team that we put out there has played together a lot in important games. I do think calm heads, which we weren’t always in the coaches’ box, but the players on the field pretty much were cool, calm and handled it.”

Siya Kolisi said England will come good, and get through this poor run where they have lost six of their last seven Tests.

“You see the way they played, they made it hard for us and we had to dig deep and keep on going over and over and we’ve been through this kind of period as well. If you give up you’re never going to make it out of it,” Kolisi said.

“You just got to keep on going. It’s tough, it’s really tough. But it really helped us and pulled us together as a group and we have certain goals and we reach those goals and that’s what I said earlier in the week, the motivation comes from within.

“We don’t look for outside motivation as we are playing for the people back in our country. It’s been special to see so many South Africans come out and support us here. So yeah, it’ll come right for them as long as they just keep on going.”