Vancouver Courier - Australia coach Schmidt hails 'great bunch of young men'

The Wallabies, who had not beaten South Africa at Ellis Park since 1963, recovered from trailing 22-0 to beat the reigning World champions and Championship title-holders.

Following a torrid last few years, the victory continues Australia's resurgence after being well beaten in the first Test against the British and Irish Lions, losing the second by just three points and then winning the dead rubber 22-12.

"This has got to rank very highly in terms of wins and for me personally, since usually you get absolutely swamped here in the last quarter," said Schmidt.

"The players had to hang in there and I am really proud of the way they did that." "You have got to earn respect every time you (play), you have to be really competitive in every game.

"We are still building our strength in depth and our game shape, but this is a great bunch of young men who have shown the ability to roll their sleeves up and earn that support.

"They deserve it and I hope there was really good support for them back in Australia."

"When the Springboks get their game going, when they are accurate, they are very hard to stop. In the first 40 minutes there was just wave after wave coming.

- 'Really awful' Springboks -

"But Fraser McReight stole the ball a few times, and the determination the team showed was very pleasing.

"This is a really tight group, they get on very well together. We have had a chance to gel and a real collective resilience was in evidence tonight."

"We were not always on the front foot."

"There were some fantastic diving tackles where we just got a boot or half a jersey. We needed a little bit of luck as well," added Schmidt.

Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus called the performance "really awful", blaming poor game management after a brilliant opening quarter.

"When you are 22-0 up, you tend to take chances, but you still need to build an innings or you can end up losing by nearly 20 points like tonight.

"There were so many breaks when Grant Williams, Manie Libbok or Edwill van der Merwe almost got away, but sometimes you have to realise that you are not quite going to get it.

"Their kick-to-ruck ratio was much better than ours -- we only kicked nine times in the second half. It's definitely not wrong to say we overplayed.

"But they did not just tactically outsmart us, but physically too. The longer the game went on, the stronger the Wallabies were.

"It was a bad loss and at some stage our heads and shoulders were down. It was sad that there was no fightback so we gave them a bonus point and did not get one ourselves."

T.Scott--VC