Updated World Rugby rankings after Springboks, Wallabies win

The Springboks recorded a 12th successive victory, but had to dig deep to overcome an unrelenting Argentina side on Saturday (17-10), with Rassie Erasmus’ charges ultimately managing to avoid a costly defeat that could also have seen them sacrifice top spot in the World Rugby rankings

Meanwhile, the Wallabies kicked off the Les Kiss era with a grueling 35-32 victory over Eddie Jones’s Japan in Osaka, overcoming sweltering conditions and a 20-minute red card to lock Miles Amatosero.

The results don’t have much impact on the World Rugby rankings, with the Springboks once again unable to improve their points standing after facing seventh-placed Argentina.

Australia remain in eighth place, but Japan have now dropped to 12th below Italy.

Updated World Rugby rankings after another Springbok win

Boks still on top

During a gruelling game in Buenos Aires, the teams entered the break tied at 10 points apiece, before a try in the fourth quarter by Cameron Hanekom broke the deadlock and put the Boks in front on the scoreboard, which they managed to hold onto despite a massive fightback by the hosts in the dying minutes.

“Our focus was purely on beating Argentina today, and we had a tough day out there,” said Erasmus.

“We looked leg-weary early on, gave up a lot of territory, and made errors which we knew were likely with seven or eight players having played very little rugby in the last six or seven weeks. I always expected us to look disjointed, having left fifteen players back in South Africa.

“Argentina play a different style of rugby, and the stadium is genuinely intimidating, but it’s a win although it wasn’t pretty and perfect. That said, we are happy with the result and with the way we ground it out.”

Erasmus added: “They play a similarly physical game to us, and we’ve always struggled to get on top of them physically, but to concede only one try, which came from an offload we probably should have stopped, tells me our defence was largely intact.

“Our discipline was also relatively good, but what we need to sort out is our attack. A number of players were short on game time returning from injury, but getting them through 80 minutes was always going to affect our fluency. The positive is that we got them through the game.”