France edged South Africa 21-19 in Paris late on Friday. Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus and captain Siya Kolisi refused to make excuses, SuperSport reported. Both said the Boks lost because they wasted scoring chances.
The Springboks trailed 21-7 at the break at the Stade de France. They also had a try disallowed on the stroke of halftime. After the break they scored two tries, one of them converted, to close the gap to two points with minutes left. They pushed until the final whistle but could not find the winning score. Each side scored three tries.
Discipline hurt the visitors. Lood de Jager was shown a yellow card for a dangerous tackle. Jasper Wiese received a 20-minute red card for a dangerous clean. Erasmus said he did not think either act was intentional, but agreed both deserved a card. He noted that the Boks played most of the game with 14 men.
Erasmus said France played well and South Africa did not. In his view, the Boks missed simple tries that needed only one last pass. He also pointed to wrong decisions, such as not kicking for the corner and expecting the referee to award four penalties in a row. It is human, he said, for a referee not to keep penalising a home team that already has a card or two.
The coach took some of the blame himself. He said the team were "uncharacteristically a little tentative" and that this probably comes down to the coaching staff. He added that he must find out why the players hesitated. The positive, he said, was the effort and the fightback: France did not score again after about 30 minutes.
Kolisi said the Boks created chances in the wide channels early on but failed to take them, while France took theirs straight away. He praised the team's effort and said the players know what they need to fix.
Erasmus also explained his late change to the front row. He said the decision came shortly before the game and was mainly about testing that combination ahead of next year's Rugby World Cup. The Springboks travel from France to Ireland on Saturday for their third Nations Championship match, in Dublin.