South Africa shrugged off a red card for the second successive match to power to a 32-14 win over an Italy side who threw away a golden opportunity to earn a rare win over the world champions in Turin on Saturday.
Franco Mostert was shown a red card after 11 minutes but Italy failed to make their extra man count, with Paolo Garbisi guilty of missing kickable penalties.
Tries from Marco van Staden, Morne van Den Berg, Grant Williams and Ethan Hooker earned South Africa a comfortable win after they withstood enormous early pressure from Italy, who scored one second-half try through Ange Capuozzo.
Italy came in buoyed up by last week’s fightback to record their second-ever win over Australia and sensed a chance to do the same against the world’s top-one ranked after South Africa made 11 changes to the team who beat France 32-17 a week ago.
Those chances took a huge boost when early Italian pressure put South Africa on the back foot and the Springboks lost Mostert to a straight red card for dangerous play but the visitors, who played the second half with 14 men against France, showed enormous resilience again.
“I’m not saying that they’ve re-made the wrong call but I definitely saw a lot of other shots in the game,” Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus said.
GARBISI MISSES KICKS
Garbisi, who had a 100% kick rate against Australia, missed the penalty and pulled another wide as Italy failed to get their noses in front.
A rare foray into the Italian 22-metre area led to Handre Pollard converting a penalty before Garbisi got off the mark to level but Van Staden drove over for a try on the stroke of halftime and, with Pollard’s conversion, South Africa went in 10-3 up.
Garbisi slotted two penalties to make it a one-point match before another Pollard penalty and Italy also briefly held a two-man advantage when Van Staden was yellow-carded early in the second half.
Italian number eight Lorenzo Cannone was sin-binned four minutes later and Van Den Berg’s try put South Africa back in the driving seat.
Capuozzo darted in over for Italy’s only try and kept them in touch, although Garbisi failed to convert. Italy’s spirit was finally broken with tries in the last 10 minutes from Williams and Hooker.
Italy were left with plenty of regrets after failing to make their pressure count and often resorting to ineffective grubber kicks when close to the Springboks’ linee.
“We had a lot of good situations where we didn’t score points, then when they got into good counter-attacking positions they showed the talent that they have,” Italy coach Gonzalo Quesada said.
South Africa take on Ireland next Saturday in Dublin while Italy host Chile in Genoa.
