Jonny Wilkinson spoke positively about England’s two-test tour to South Africa.
“I still can’t shake from my head the fact that if we had done what we wanted in Pretoria on Saturday, we would have been in the game. At half-time we were leading but we had nevertheless hardly started to play. So I guess at the very least, I’m going home from this tour not thinking that there is a massive gulf between these two teams, but that we had an opportunity here on the field that we missed.
“What I said to the team afterwards was this: that the game was a message about what it takes to play at this level and that we had shown that we are capable of it. Yes, it is a horrible feeling, but if we push ourselves, if we keep learning the lessons, then one day we will be handing them out ourselves.
“So put the scorelines aside for a while and I’ll explain why this tour has been a success. For a start, the Springboks were never beating us from the first minute; when we’ve been organised and kept our shape, we’ve been able to match them.
“Secondly and probably more importantly, the definition of success here for me has been about the development of the squad. I ask myself: what would happen if we stayed here for another six weeks and played these Springboks every Saturday? The risk of losing heavily the way we have done in successive weeks is that you get dispirited and that you begin to believe you are chasing lost causes and if that was the case, then the scorelines over the next six weeks would get worse and worse.
“But the opposite has been the case here and the evidence is clear: in the first Test we matched them for periods of the game, on Saturday we matched them for an entire half. If we stayed here and kept playing them every Saturday, I think the scorelines would get closer and closer, we’d believe in ourselves more and more, not less and less, and we’d improve as we understood the challenges, got smarter and took on board the lessons each week. And this is a very good South Africa side. What has struck me about them in particular is the balance they have: size, power, speed, the ability to score from nowhere, good goalkickers, experience and youth. It is a unit with great all-roundness.
“But while we’re not going to play them six weeks in a row, we’ve now got three months to be learning lessons and we’ve got guys at home with experience and ability to add. And our big World Cup game against them will be in different conditions and in a different place. I find all that encouraging. That is why I am hoping that some day not too far away, we will look back on these games and this tour and thank God that we went through it.â€