France-South Africa: “We played badly”, regrets the Springbok coach

“The French played well and we played badly, but we have no excuses, they took their chances, and not us,” admitted Rassie Erasmus, the South African coach, after his men's 21-19 defeat against the XV of France on Friday evening at the Stade de France.

Before regretting certain decisions of the Italian referee. “And maybe two or three refereeing decisions didn't go our way. But in front of such a stadium, continuing to penalize the team which is dominated when you have already given one or two cards, it's difficult, but it's human... Of course, playing with 14 is complicated (after Wiese's red card, Editor's note), but I don't think the fault was intentional. The positive thing is that, even at 14 for most of the game, we came back. And Attissogbe's try (after Gourgues' header, editor's note) is a bit lucky. No defensive system can do anything about that.”

“We killed our dreams of winning this Nations Championship”

Rassie Erasmus summed up his state of mind. “Nothing really worked out for us tonight, and it will be up to us as staff to understand why. Our domination in the scrum was not rewarded, the two cards (yellow for de Jager, red for Wiese, Editor's note) penalized us, but the referees are human. We are all human beings.”

And to conclude: “In any case I believe that we killed our dreams of winning this Nations Championship with our performance this evening, by not taking the offensive bonus for four tries and with only the defensive bonus…”