They may have overcome a 62-year drought at Ellis Park, but a famous Wallabies win was far from on the cards based on the opening 20 minutes, which Joe Schmidt admitted post-match was “horrendous.”
With the side completing a big training session in Cape Town on Tuesday, that opening period has been what most of the Wallabies squad, including Nick Frost, are looking to focus on.
“[Tuesday]'s a pretty heavy day,” Frost said to reporters.
“We'll get a bunch of our work done, things that we do each week that we need to prepare. We know if we don't test ourselves during the week, we don't really set ourselves up for a good performance on the weekend.
“Probably in that opening 20-odd minutes, we didn't win too many collisions. We know how the Springboks play, they come out hard and fast, and we struggled a bit there.
“Joe [Schmidt] brought a bit there. Laurie Fisher as well, that's his bread and butter, going through a lot of those defense systems.
“It's another area that we're definitely going to look at for this week coming up, because we know that they started pretty bloody well.”
It has helped Frost that the squad has settled into a groove under Schmidt, with Tom Hooper recalling a quote from Fisher last week that the side is “in the business of getting better.”
“I think for any team, you do have to definitely be ups and downs,” Frost added.
“It's not just an upwards trajectory of improvement. I think we showed [in] some games last year, especially on that Spring Tour, [we] put a couple of good games together there, and really tested ourselves against some of the top teams in the world.
“It's been great under Joe. I think all the boys and staff have been enjoying the environment, first and foremost, it's translated into a performance like that [from the weekend].”
Frost enjoyed a strong Saturday afternoon, pinching several key defensive lineouts and asking questions of the Springboks’ set piece.
However, the 30-capped lock believed it was a far from perfect performance, and is preparing for an even more ruthless reply from the Springboks, who will take the field with ten new players.
“It was definitely a double-edged sword,” he clarified.
“We did lose a few and they put a whole lot of pressure on us.
Always going up against the Springboks, it's going to be a set-piece battle. I think the boys did a lot of homework during the week of what we can expect from them. There's credit to a few boys there because it's not an individual thing.
“It was good potentially in that defensive space. But we've got to look at our attack heading forward from there because we did lose a couple against the throw, and a couple in big moments there which could have potentially hurt us.
“The first 20 odd minutes, definitely we were under the pump there. I'm pretty sure the Springboks are going to double down on what they did at the start: tactical kicking, physicality, big ball carriers, good defence, and they really pinned us in our own 22, and it was quite hard to get out of there.
“That's a massive area that we're going to look at and to get better on, first and foremost.
“We're understanding what the challenge is going to come. It's been spoken about, the response, emotionally and the physicality that's going to be brought.”
