After Esterhuizen‘s dismissal – he initially received a yellow card which was later upgraded to red – Portugal made full use of their numerical advantage and opened the scoring in the 10th minute when Jose Paiva dos Santos crossed for the first of two tries.

Mannix was impressed with the way his troops started the match and for the way they stayed in the fight but admitted that he knew that it was only a matter of time before the Boks took control of proceedings.

“I hope the players will remember that, because this was a historical event for us, and as well for South Africa,” he added.

“And as the 15th ranked team in the world, coming to the number one ranked team in the world, for 10 minutes our guys showed we want to play, we’re going to try and get the ball to space, here’s what we can do.

“And we had the try ruled out, and the score would have come back to 22-14, with about 15 minutes to go to half-time.

“And even then, there were never any illusions in the coaching box that we’re going to do something special, but we could have stayed in the game a little bit longer, but physically just so tough, so tough for our men tonight, but they hung in strong.

“But we’re going to get better, and that’s the promise that we have for everybody back in Portugal, that we will get better, and we’ll work harder, and we’ll come back stronger.”

One player who made a big impact for Os Lobos was Paiva dos Santos, who came on as Lima’s replacement, and finished with a match-high 145 metres gained while crossing for two tries.

‘A great kid’

“He looked the part of a Test match player last week as well. Jose’s a great kid. I’m getting to know him,” said Mannix of the 23-year-old.

“He started last week in Namibia. Tonight he was on the bench, came on, took his opportunity. I thought he was going to go in for a hat trick.

“I thought, how many players have scored a hat trick against South Africa in their career? I was so hoping that he would do that, go into the record book somewhere. I thought there are a lot of guys who carried themselves extremely well. It’s easy to point to the backline because there’s a lot of talent in there.

“I thought they were great. I’m just delighted with everybody.”

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‘We won’t win World Cups like that’ – Rassie Erasmus reacts to Andre Esterhuizen’s ‘accident’

Rassie Erasmus has rued the Springboks’ ill-discipline during the Test match against Portugal in Bloemfontein after three cards were issued to the hosts.

The Boks played nearly the entire match down at least one player when referee Hollie Davidson issued Andre Esterhuizen a red card after bunker review of his tackle on Os Lobos’ centre Jose Lima.

Fellow backs Kurt-Lee Arendse and Quan Horn would also visit the sin bin, the former for a croc-roll and the latter for a tackle in the air.

Despite the numerical disadvantage, the Springboks still managed to impress with four debutants grabbing tries as the back-to-back World Cup winners ran in 10 tries.

Rassie Erasmus’ one concern

Speaking after the match, Erasmus said that overall, he was pleased by his team’s performance with one exception, the discipline.

“Our discipline is obviously something that we’ll need to look at,” he explained.

“To get a red card so early – 2 minutes into the game – obviously you won’t win World Cups like that and then another two yellow cards so yes I got everything out of the performance that I wanted except that.”

Since Erasmus returned to South Africa in 2018, the Springboks have been renowned for being a side that tackles low – a precedent set by former defence and head coach Jacques Nienaber.

New defence coach Jerry Flannery has continued with those standards with Erasmus explaining that the team work incredibly hard on their tackle height.

“It’s definitely an accident and it’s not something done on purpose,” the Bok boss explained after being asked whether over-eagerness from Horn and Esterhuizen factored into their incidents.

“We really train level changes and minding players in the air a hell of a lot. You can’t really say to a player that was on purpose, it was an accident.”

Still, the Bok boss was pleased by the performance of his charges.

“It wasn’t a beautiful match at times, and it didn’t look like we were going to punish them with 50 points, but the crowd never got negative, and I think that helped the players,” he added.

Praise for Portugal

While many would have preferred a third Test match against Ireland to decide the series, the Bok head coach praised Portugal for their fight.

“They are a tier two nation, I can tell you this team we picked will give that Ireland team that we played last week a go,” Erasmus stressed commenting on Os Lobos’ performance.

“For a team like Portugal to come here and play at altitude – people forget that – and they did well to hang in there.

“I spoke to their coach afterwards, he is not downhearted – he is excited – this is what they need [to play against a Tier One side].

“We are happy to have that, we are able to blood youngsters against them but it’s still a tough Test match, we learned that we can play with 14 men and we had to make plans on the field – that’s a nice experience.

“Overall, I feel that if you forget the scoreline and look at the way they really tried and the effort that they put in – at half-time we weren’t comfortable, we still had a lot of work to do – they can hold their heads high and we are very happy to have them.”