Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus believes his team have taken huge strides forward in a few short weeks‚ which has set them up well for the rest of the international season.

“Teams have to go through different pressure situations‚ which are sometimes good and sometimes bad.

“There are always things to be learned for players in terms of understanding the coach‚ and the assistant coaches or for the coaches when dropping players and making big decisions.

“So there is definitely a much better understanding of the way we work and the way we want to work from a few weeks ago. But we still haven’t gelled properly and there have been some hiccups along the way.

“On the field we have definitely improved in areas that were weak – although they’re far from perfect.

"The kicking game has come on and tactically we are getting better in terms of the balance between attack and defence. But we are way off the pace compared to New Zealand.”