Rassie Erasmus praises Springbok defensive improvement after Wales win

South Africa hammered the Welsh 43-0 in Durban on Saturday, a week after they were given a huge fright by Scotland in Pretoria.

Since defeating England in their Nations Championship opener, where the defending world champions fielded a fully-loaded side, Erasmus has rotated.

He named mix and match teams for the second and third matches in the competition, but the head coach was more pleased with the performance against Wales.

"You have to take into account that Wales flew from Argentina here and then they come to a field like this which is wet and heavy where you can't really grab the ball and pass the ball that well," Erasmus said.

"We saw world-class players make a few knock-ons. In this game you learn that our defence was better than last week, we worked really hard on that, and then our set-piece was really solid, but then there was a lot of handling errors.

"Some guys handled the pressure of Test match rugby a little bit better than we did last week, but who's the better; Scotland or Wales? It's difficult to say how much we've learnt but it's a Test match and a lot of guys came through this Test match with tick marks."

Despite scoring seven tries in the victory over Steve Tandy's men, the Springboks perhaps left a few more out there due to their mistakes in attack.

However, they were improved up front with their scrum, which was perhaps not as impressive as expected against England and Scotland, back to its usual standard.

They regularly forced the Welsh front-row into reverse, winning a number of penalties that allowed the hosts to keep the pressure on the tourists.

Erasmus added: "You have to take it department by department. How was the scrum? How were the defensive scrums? How was the mauls? How was the maul-stopping? How was the attack? How was the handling?

"We tried to get better in each position player-wise and then also tactically and technically, and definitely every game we got a little bit better, but obviously because we're rotating, it does take our cohesion away."

The Springboks next big focus is on the Greatest Rivalry series against the All Blacks and they will prepare for those four Tests with a game against Argentina in early August.

"We'll probably have a week off and then 26 guys will go to Argentina, 15 or 16 guys will stay behind, one or two guys are rehabbing and then they will start training for the New Zealand. A few coaches will stay behind with them," Erasmus said.

"Argentina's going to be tough. Like Wales, they've had our number a few times, I think our biggest loss since 2018 was against Argentina. We're just building our game, trying to build our game and Saturday was another step."