South Africa success comes on the back of lessons learnt in France last year-Erasmus

South Africa changed their approach for the Rugby World Cup because of lessons learnt when they were in France last year and lost a bruising test in Marseille, the country's director of rugby Rassie Erasmus said on Monday.

In that game last November they were down to 14 men for all but 12 minutes of the encounter, after Pieter-Steph du Toit was sent off early, and lost 30-26.

But there was victory for the Springboks on Sunday as they edged the hosts 29-28 at the Stade de France to advance to a last four clash against England.

Erasmus said changing the way they played in the interim was key after he warned last year that South Africa, after being beaten at the Stade Velodrome, would have to adapt by "making things clearer for referees".

"I posted a few tweets at that time that a lot of people said was controversial, but I was being serious. You can't just rely on mauling, scrumming and close contact work where it's very difficult for the referee to make the correct decision, because its dynamic and busy and there are many grey areas," Erasmus told a virtual news conference on Monday.

"So we had to adapt, first of all, not just to rely on box kicking, and defence and scrums and mauls. We had to look to score tries with more open, fluent running rugby and you can see by our try scoring count at the World Cup that more have been more scored by our backs than the forwards."

Erasmus said playing a style of rugby that made it difficult for the referee to officiate drastically reduced scoring opportunities, "if the referee get one or two decisions wrong".

"But if you fire shots in open play, on top of lineouts or counter attacks, it's clear for the referee and easier to make the right decisions. I really think people did interpret my