South Africa head coach Jacques Nienaber accepts his team have plenty of room for improvement with just under a year to go until their Rugby World Cup defence gets under way.
The Springboks could only beat Argentina 38-21 in the final match of the Rugby Championship on Saturday, and that meant New Zealand took the trophy.
South Africa required a try-scoring bonus point plus a winning margin of at least 39 points at Kings Park in Durban, but the Pumas would not be rolled over in such a manner.
The daunting title target for the Boks had been set when the All Blacks posted a crushing 40-14 victory against Australia earlier in the day.
Before their 2019 World Cup win, the Boks won a three-match Rugby Championship. The 2020 championship was cancelled due to the pandemic, but the All Blacks have now carried off the title in 2021 and 2022, this time around serving to ease some of the pressure on coach Ian Foster.
It was tight this year, with New Zealand and South Africa both winning four of six games, but the All Blacks managed one more bonus point and a superior points difference.
Nienaber is already looking forward to November away games against Ireland, France, Italy and England, as South Africa look to gather themselves for a big push into next year. The World Cup begins in September 2023 in France.
"We are not there yet, we need to find consistency," Nienaber said. "In that regard, we will get a good idea where we are on the end-of-year tour.
"We play the number one [Ireland] and number two [France] in the world in the first two games of the tour. So it will be a challenging tour for us."
South Africa had not scored 39 points in a match, let alone won by that margin, since a 40-9 defeat of Georgia in July 2021.
They last beat Argentina by such a hefty points margin in 2013, when posting a 73-13 landslide win, but the Pumas are far more competitive nowadays, as wins over Australia and New Zealand in this championship showed.
Nienaber said his players still felt they could pull off the improbable against Argentina when they took to the field.
"We saw it as a realistic target, we took on the task full on," Nienaber said, quoted by Supersport. "We needed to get a 39-point winning margin to win the trophy, and we all bought into it.
"In the end we came up short, but you can never take a win in the Springbok jersey for granted, victory is always special. We are glad we came out on the right side of today's result, even if we didn't get what we needed to win the championship."
Australia 'fell off a cliff' in biggest-ever Test defeat
Australia suffered their biggest-ever Test defeat on Saturday, as Argentina came from behind to win 67-27 in the Rugby Championship.
And Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt said his team simply "fell off a cliff" after taking a 17-point lead.
Having snapped an eight-game winless run in the Rugby Championship with their last-gasp victory over Argentina last week, Australia were looking to keep the momentum going.
And they looked well set to do just that as tries from Carlo Tizzano and Andrew Kellaway propelled them into a 20-3 lead.
But Mateo Carreras and Julian Montoya, who was playing for Argentina for the 100th time, dragged Argentina back into it and paved the way for Australia's capitulation after the break.
Juan Martin Gonzalez, Joaquin Oviedo, Juan Cruz Mallia and Lucio Cinti all crossed for the Pumas in the second half, with Santiago Carreras' conversion condemning Australia to their record defeat.
"To lead a Test match 20-3 and get run down in the manner which we did is really disappointing," said Schmidt.
"We cannot let a game get away from us like it did and fall off a cliff.
"We lost connection in our defensive line. We were forever chasing them.
"We didn't put enough pressure on at the breakdown, so they were operating off a lightning-quick ball, and it's just too difficult to keep chasing a team on a hot day when they’ve got the ball and going forward."
Australia's previous record Test defeat had come against South Africa in 1997.
Matters do not get any easier for the Wallabies, who now face two matches against Schmidt's native New Zealand as they aim to avoid finishing bottom of the pile.
Second-place Argentina, meanwhile, will tussle it out with Rugby Championship leaders South Africa.
Kolisi 'had to prove himself' in landmark South Africa triumph
South Africa captain Siya Kolisi said he had to prove himself after being given the chance to lead the Springboks out in their Rugby Championship win over New Zealand.
Kolisi's early try after the break sparked the hosts' revival after they went in at half-time 9-3 down before roaring to an 18-12 victory in Cape Town.
It was the fourth successive win by the Springboks over the All Blacks, as they maintained their perfect record in this year's Rugby Championship.
Kolisi described the encounter as South Africa's most important game since they won the World Cup final against the same opponents in Paris last year.
"The coach gave me the chance when I said I was okay so I couldn’t go half-hearted. Nobody is going to celebrate you if you don’t go flat out," said Kolisi.
"We didn’t start the way we wanted to and the coach was quite honest with us [at half-time]. At the start of the second half we did what we wanted.
"This game was really big for us."
The triumph marked the first time since 1949 that South Africa have won four straight Tests against New Zealand.
However, head coach Rassie Erasmus was muted despite achieving the most successful streak against South Africa's arch-rivals in the professional era.
"It was nice, but they have had big scores against us and six times in a row they have beaten us," he said.
"It's nothing to brag about because they have done worse to us. But it was special."
South Africa 18-12 New Zealand: Springboks close in on Rugby Championship glory
South Africa continued their dominance in this year's Rugby Championship as they clinched an 18-12 victory over New Zealand in Cape Town on Saturday.
Having trailed by six points heading into the break, the hosts rallied to record a fourth consecutive win over the All Blacks and lift the Freedom Cup for the first time in 15 years.
New Zealand started brightly, with their dominance rewarded by the boot of Damian McKenzie after Jasper Wiese had been sent to the sin bin.
McKenzie converted his second penalty just before the half-hour mark as the Springboks saw some uncharacteristic errors punished.
Handre Pollard's penalty failed to change the sway of momentum, with McKenzie's third conversion of the half giving the All Blacks the advantage at the break.
But an immediate response transpired after the interval as Siya Kolisi burst over the tryline, with Pollard's conversion handing the Springboks the lead for the first time.
Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu extended South Africa's advantage, but McKenzie's fourth and final penalty of the encounter closed the gap once again.
However, the hosts sealed the win when Malcolm Marx powered over for a try six minutes from time to see the Springboks close in on the title.
Data Debrief: Cape Town comforts
This is the first time since 1949 that South Africa have won four straight Tests against their great rivals New Zealand.
They have also now won four straight Tests in Cape Town, and that is despite trailing at half-time in three of those four matches.
New Zealand, meanwhile, have lost three of their last four Tests, having only suffered one defeat across their previous nine matches.
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