South Africa v Wales winners and losers as coaches earn respect and Springboks don't look like world champs

Wales came up short in their quest to add a first ever series win in South Africa to their maiden Test success in the Rainbow Nation a week earlier.

As ever, there were those who fell into the winners’ and losers’ brackets – and this is how we saw it….

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This is not the name of some hooligan faction among the nation’s fans, but a tag that could be applied to the nucleus of players that make South Africa arguably the most physical rugby side on the planet.

It would be churlish to call a world champion outfit limited – they are not – but their winning strategy owes nothing to breakthroughs in the field of rocket science.

They reverted to type to get this series won. In short, the power and physical dominance so many individual players in their ranks are able to exert.

Wales simply didn’t have an answer in the end. If the series had been a boxing match they would have gone the distance, but lost on points despite a rally in the middle four rounds of the bout.

There are very few teams who can cope with the relentless brute force the Boks exert.

Wales were brave to the point of heroism in spells, but they buckled eventually.

Before flying out to South Africa, rumours abounded that the Wales camp was not the happiest of environments.

And that was down to more than the natural frustration of having lost to Italy in the final Six Nations match.

There were suggestions not all were buying into Wayne Pivac’s methods and philosophy, and that such discontent would likely manifest on the pitch against the Springboks.

Who knows whether such rumours had, or have, any substance, but one thing we do know is that there’s nothing