Springboks 'deserved to win' against Ireland - Farrell

Ireland head coach Andy Farrell felt his side made too many mistakes in the first half of their 27-20 defeat to South Africa in Pretoria on Saturday.

The Six Nations champions were only behind 13-8 at the break but found it hard to impose themselves on the contest through the first 40 minutes.

Led by the likes of Caelan Doris, the visitors performed admirably to stay in the contest but Farrell felt the world champions were good value for their victory in the first game of this two-Test series.

"In the cold light of day, I thought South Africa deserved to win the game so congratulations to them," the Ireland head coach said.

"First half, I thought we was off. I thought we gave away access for them to be able to play their game. Defensively, we was a bit passive, certainly for the first try."

Ireland had greater success in their phase play in the second half, and would have levelled the game with a conversion attempt to come had James Lowe's score not been ruled out for an infraction at the previous ruck picked up by the TMO.

Farrell was encouraged by the character shown by his side to remain in the Test match until the very end.

"After some words at half-time, I thought it was courageous the way we defended and got ourselves back into the game," he added.

"In fact, it’s the make-up of this team and history would say it, that even with the type of performance in the first half, we hung in there. We don’t go away.

"There are plenty of teams that would have been under the pump in the first half like that and then seen the game run away from them in the second half. We didn’t. We stayed in the fight."

After the decision to chalk off Lowe's try, the Leinster wing was involved in another marginal call that went against Ireland. On this occasion the officiating team concluded that he had kept the ball in play from a Handre Pollard kick to touch before Cheslin Kolbe gathered to score.

Farrell, who will lead the British and Irish Lions in Australia next summer, said his side would go "through the right channels" to voice their opinion on the game's key refereeing decisions.

Ireland look sure to be forced into changes for the second Test in Durban next week after hooker Dan Sheehan, centre Robbie Henshaw, debutant full-back Jamie Osborne and scrum-half Craig Casey all left the game in Pretoria through injury.

Springbok's head coach Rassie Erasmus is expecting an even greater challenge from the tourists second time around.

"Ireland will work out what we tried to do and we’re going to try and work out what they did because they also scored three tries,” said Erasmus.

“Just like [on Saturday], they never give up. They’ll try to be more dominant.

"They had an injury at hooker and their nine went down, so there were disruptive things in the game.

“I thought the Cheslin try was probably the put-away where we were lucky. But until the last second, we were still nervy about the game.

"So no, they’re definitely not going to run away. They’re going to be better next weekend and we will have to really perform.”

The Springboks victory ended a run of three consecutive Irish victories in this fixture and it was Erasmus' first win over the nation where he worked for 18 months as Munster's director of rugby.

“Since 2018, this is the only team that we had a zero percent success rate against, including New Zealand and the Lions," he added.

"They really had our number and they came back so strongly. I think if they didn’t have big injuries, I think the game would have been much tighter.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a monkey off our back but it’s a really good, competitive team that’s number two [in the world rankings] and any day can beat you and be number one.”