South Africa coach Rassie Erasmus has labelled his team’s next match against Australia as “win at all costs” after they suffered a 32-19 defeat away to Argentina.

The Springboks opened their Rugby Championship campaign with an unconvincing victory at home to the Pumas, who responded with an emphatic first-half performance to set up the win in Mendoza yesterday.

Up next for South Africa is a crunch meeting with Australia, winless after two defeats to New Zealand, in Brisbane on September 8, when Erasmus knows there will be no margin for error against a desperate Wallabies team.

“This was a terrible performance – it was unacceptable and we cannot perform like that in a Springbok jersey,” Erasmus said.

“It is not just the players’ fault, I am the coach and I must make sure we don’t perform like that. We are all disappointed – not just with the defensive effort but in the first 15, 20 minutes we had so many opportunities to score tries.

“We did not capitalise on it and we look like a team playing club rugby. I must point the finger at myself – when you play like this then the coach must be doing something badly wrong during the week.

“We have to turn it around – we had certain plans we wanted to try against Australia but that is out the window now. We have to get back to winning ways and it is win at all costs now. This loss puts us back quite a bit. We wanted to win this game and then give a few guys a chance against Australia.

“We can’t do that now, we lost – so now we have to beat Australia.”

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