Despite the most optimistic faces on the Springbok team at the moment, there is no doubt the Boks will be privately fuming with themselves at the way they allowed Wales to steal momentum in their 17-16 victory in Wellington on Sunday.

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While the Boks have been putting on a solid front that the win is all that matters, privately they will be hard at work knowing that while a performance of that nature may have been enough to beat Wales, it certainly won’t be good enough to win the World Cup.

The Boks will point at the positives, the victory and scoring when it counted. They also will point to their defensive system which held out for large periods of time, the character in the side and the 178 tackles they needed to make to ensure the victory.

But there will also be a different talk in the camp behind the scenes. While Monday was largely a recovery day for the team after the hard game on Sunday night, Tuesday will present the first opportunity to rectify matters.

There was a sense of agitation within team ranks all week regarding the length of the build-up. Wales also are a much better side than many gave them credit for and were determined to beat the Boks on the night.

While it may look a little as if the Boks are in their own private universe by not acknowledging the fears of their huge support base, they certainly know that a lot of work lies ahead before they meet Fiji at the same venue on Saturday.

The first to admit this was Bok assistant coach Gary Gold, who gave a frank and honest assessment of the Boks performance in beating Wales.

“The win is important, but obviously we have one or two concerns about the way we started and how we need to continue like that,” Gold explained. “We are going to have to address that. Thankfully we came away with a win and while there were passages where our performance wasn’t good enough, we must balance that out with the character that we showed.

“At 16-10 Wales really came at us, and we showed incredible character to defend. There will be a lot of positives but we must be realistic and open and honest about areas of the game where we let Wales back in.”

Gold intimated that the early try, which South Africa scored in the opening three minutes of the game, probably messed up their structure more than they would have liked. The Boks suddenly tried to give more air to the ball, instead of playing off Fourie du Preez at nine and using their forwards to keep their attacking shape.

“We wanted to negate their up and in defence system and in the beginning we did, and it led to the opening try. Then what started happening is that we started playing with 10 and started giving them too much width.

“ The minute you start throwing the ball around and get caught behind the advantage line, they flood the breakdown. They tackle us, we drop the ball and they kick it through. The suddenly there is a dropped high kick, and they’re on the attack and we struggle to get out of our half.

“Our message the whole time was to keep our shape and when we went back to that in the second half we hurt them and got momentum. From that point of view we probably scored a bit early, and if we had held our shape and scored two or three more tries, it probably would have put us in good stead.”

Come Saturday against the magicians from the South Sea, the Boks can ill-afford to make the same mistakes again.