One win is not enough for South Africa to believe that they are out of the losing habit, Springboks centre Jean de Villiers said after the Tri-Nations victory over Australia on Saturday.
“We’ve been in a negative spiral so, once you win, you want to keep on winning,” De Villiers told Reuters after the 44-31 win at Loftus Versfeld ended a four-match losing streak.
“If we play badly next week, then the pressure is just back on us again. We need back-to-back performances because we can’t take one step forward and then two steps back.”
The Springboks, who have surrendered their Tri-Nations title to New Zealand, meet Australia again next Saturday in Bloemfontein.
In Pretoria, they recovered from a poor start to beat the Wallabies and De Villiers said they had shown character and experience.
“We’ve been through a lot in the last couple of months and then we were down 21-7. It took character and the leadership in the team to turn that around. We showed again that we are a good team, we can win the tight games.
“To come back like we did, to put everything behind us, really showed character and the experience of the many guys who have been in these positions in the past,” added De Villiers, who earned his 62nd cap.
Captain John Smit said he was happy with the rugby his team produced in the second half.
“The second half was a little bit closer to what we want. But after the start we had, we know we definitely need to tighten up, that really complicated matters.
“We wanted a lot more accuracy and it came after the first 15 minutes, but that is not the type of rugby that will win you the World Cup. We want to show patience and play on our own terms.”
Australian coach Robbie Deans said he had been under no illusions that his team’s rapid start had finished off the Springboks.
“We could not have asked for a better start but I’ve been around too long to think it was going to be easy after that. We finished well early on but our finishing was not as effective later on.
“There was some good play, some constructive rugby, and we could have won, which makes it immensely frustrating, particularly with our history up on the highveld,” Deans said after the Wallabies lost their 12th successive test at altitude in South Africa.
Springbok vice-captain Victor Matfield, who won his 100th cap, said: “We can enjoy tonight but we must not get ahead of ourselves, there’s still a lot of hard work to be done.” – Reuters