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Durban - Springbok coach Allister Coetzee says that winning matches is more important than how the side wins.
On Saturday the Boks were tryless as they edged Australia 18-10 in a Rugby Championship affair at Loftus.
It was not the performance that supporters would have wanted as the Boks struggled to ever threaten the Australian line.
Evolving into a more attacking, ball in hand unit is something that supporters as well as the powers hat be at SA Rugby have been vocal about since last year's Rugby World Cup semi-final loss to New Zealand.
But it hasn't all gone according to plan and after three straight losses to Argentina, Australia and then New Zealand Coetzee went back to the 'old school' approach by selecting Morne Steyn at flyhalf ahead of the struggling Elton Jantjies.
It was a decision that paid off, on the scoreboard anyway, and Coetzee reiterated in Durban on Monday that winning Test matches remains the priority.
"Every Test match is important to win. It doesn’t matter if you grind it out or whatever, however you guys think that we should win Test matches," Coetzee said.
"You’ve got to keep winning and growing in confidence.
"The second point is to show improvement against the world’s best and on Saturday (against Australia) we created enough opportunity but didn’t finish those opportunities.
"There are still things to work on. I would have been worried if we hadn’t had those opportunities."
The Boks turn their attention to New Zealand again this weekend, who they host at Kings Park on Saturday.
For now, Coetzee is largely pleased with what he saw from his charges against the Wallabies.
"Importantly, we have to build continuous pressure with ball in hand and we are actually our own worst enemies when it comes to that," he said.
"We spoke about kick pressure; we did that. We spoke about set piece pressure; we did that. So we are ticking boxes. There are a few more boxes that we have to tick and that’s what I’m looking at."
Kick-off on Saturday is at 17:05.
