Erasmus pleased to get Irish monkey off South Africa's back

DUBLIN :South Africa coach Rassie Erasmus was pleased his team could get a monkey off their back on Saturday by winning in Dublin for the first time in 13 years and start to tip the scales of the sides' recent rivalry away from Ireland.

South Africa dominated a chaotic game in which Ireland were handed one 20-minute red card and four yellows and they should have run out much more comfortable winners than the 24-13 scoreline suggested.

It was, however, the world champions' first victory in four attempts at the Aviva Stadium, having also lost four of the last five clashes with Andy Farrell's men.

"Ireland has totally dominated us since we've been a group together, if you take the five games they're still 3-2 up against us, so we won't get carried away with this," said the former Munster coach who was also celebrating his first win at the stadium.

"We are proud after a long season to grind through a win against a team like them at home for the first time in 13 or 14 years."

SOUTH AFRICA DOMINATE SCRUMMAGE

The Springboks totally overwhelmed Ireland in the scrum, inflicting much of the disciplinary damage. Man of the match and newly-crowned world player of the year Malcolm Marx remarked that having so many scrums was not "pleasing on the neck".

But it made for an altogether different experience after they had to win with 14 men in their last two games, including a hugely impressive victory over Six Nations champions France.

"We've been part of quite a few games that were like this when we had to grind it out with 14 men, this was a totally different challenge here. I thought we were dominant for most parts of the game, but just couldn't kill it," Erasmus said.

"It was hectic, it was difficult to manage... Certainly not a perfect