Siya Kolisi and Rassie Erasmus assess England's future

South Africa captain Siya Kolisi has assured England that it will “come right for them,” saying the double world champions have been through a similar period.

Kolisi led his side to a hard-fought 20-29 victory over England at Twickenham’s Allianz Stadium on Saturday, but it was not necessarily a match that looked like the world number ones playing the seventh-ranked team in the world who have won one of their last seven matches.

Steve Borthwick’s side looked promising at times, but ultimately did not have enough in the final 20 minutes of the match, which has been the case all November.

Steve Borthwick and Jamie George react to loss against Springboks

Steve Borthwick and Jamie George react to loss against Springboks

But Kolisi offered the struggling outfit some encouragement after the match, insisting that they should continue what they are doing.

Prior to his first match as captain – against England in 2018 – the Springboks had only won three of their previous nine Test matches, including a 57-0 loss to the All Blacks. The shellacking at the hands of New Zealand aside, there were some results that didn’t look too dissimilar to England’s now. Two two-point defeats, one loss by a single point and two draws came before they turned a corner.

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England

59 - 14

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Japan

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That means Kolisi is well-qualified to offer these words of hope to England, who will look to arrest their losing streak against Japan on Sunday.

“We’ve been through this period as well,” the double World Cup-winning captain said. “If you give up, you’re never going to make it out of it. You’ve just got to keep on going. It’s tough, it’s really tough, but it really helped us and pulled us together as a group. We had certain goals and we reached those goals.

“The motivation comes from within us. We don’t look for outside motivation.

“It will come right for them as long as they just keep on going.”

Head coach Rassie Erasmus was in agreement with his captain, who took the opportunity post-match to explain his comments about Borthwick being “under pressure” before their meeting in London.

“I’m still nervous that my words will get twisted in a headline or something like that, so I would like to explain the whole thing,” Erasmus said.

“Coaches will say ‘he’s under pressure’ with Borthwick, but I’d just like to say that we’ve been there. What you normally do then is you fall back to what you know is a go-to and you know work. We had a good feeling that he would probably go back to Freddie Steward.

“I think with this team, they’ve had three southern hemisphere teams now and took them close to the last 10 minutes. I think if they keep what they’re doing… We found it tough to break them down.”