Erasmus given plenty to think about after rare France defeat

After being "outplayed" and "outsmarted", South Africa coach Rassie Erasmus said he had a lot to think about before the world champions' next matches.

Despite a stirring second-half comeback and near-total dominance up front, the Springboks came up short in Friday night's 21-19 Nations Championship defeat to France in Paris.

It leaves them at risk of missing out on the tournament final at Twickenham in two weeks' time, with New Zealand now in pole position to top the southern hemisphere group.

The double world champions are not used to coming up short in tournament rugby.

They have won the world title four times in their eight appearances.

And they had won nine of their previous 10 Tests against France.

But a look at Friday night's statistics suggests that South Africa probably should have won.

They had a perfect record on their own line-outs and scrums, had the edge in possession and territory and forced nine penalties at scrum time.

France copped three yellow cards, including one crucially at the end of the game that left them battling to hold out with 14 men as South Africa, who themselves had one yellow and one 20-minute red card, tried to batter down their defences.

But ultimately, France's vibrant first-half performance made the difference -- as did Manie Libbok's missed conversion.

It all left Erasmus scratching his head, while also marvelling at the performance of France captain Antoine Dupont, who was named man of the match playing in his usual scrum-half position despite initially being named at fly-half due to the hosts' injury crisis in that position.

"Dupont is just a player that's so instinctive, he sees the space," said Erasmus.

"And when he sees in the middle of the field there's space there, he kicks it down there.

"When he does a little dink over the right, I think he's just naturally like that.

"He's, as we all know, a brilliant player and it's difficult to plan against him, especially when we didn't know if he was going to play 10 or nine.

"That made it difficult.

"But overall I thought they (France) were good in the air.

"They were also sharp with putting the five-lock (Mickael Guillard) sometimes back and receiving some of our box kicks.

"So in a way we weren't just outplayed, I think we were outsmarted as well."

And yet Erasmus was largely happy with how his own team performed, particularly in keeping France scoreless from the 32nd minute onwards -- although by then they were 21-7 down.

They were also a touch unlucky, with Theo Attissogbe's try for France coming after a Yoram Moefana pass pinged off Kalvin Gourgues's head and bounced invitingly into the Springbok end zone.

"If you must look for something that's positive, it's the effort, the grind, the try to fight back," said Erasmus.

"I thought, actually, we defended really, really well... I really thought we tackled with guts and we kept them out."

In the end, a Kurt-Lee Arendse try chalked off for a marginal offside just before half-time and a bit of the rub of the green cost South Africa.

"How do you tell the team, prepare (for) when the ball bounces off a guy's head? There's not a defensive system that can stop that," said Erasmus.

But he said his team had played themselves into a "hole".

"It was almost like we uncharacteristically were a little bit tentative tonight," he said.

"And when something like that happens, it's probably the coaching staff."

He added: "So, that's something I have to find out and look (at) the whole night through, why that happened and look at the week (ahead)."