True to form, Ireland rattled the Springboks' cage and shook local arrogance in Free State Stadium on Saturday. Resilient and resourceful, Ireland even had the temerity to take the lead and were still taking the game to South Africa for much of the third quarter; which only made the final scoreline more anti-climactic.

In the final analysis, the Irish ought to have pushed the Springboks even closer, and they knew it. Yet mingled with the disappointment will have been a sense of pride. They never buckled, not after giving the home side a sevenpoint start or when the rusty Springboks threatened to cut loose. Many aspects of the performance deserved better reward.

The pack's play generally and the set-pieces especially were good. Passages of the defensive work were outstanding too. Thanks to the kicking of Eric Elwood and also Conor O'Shea, they played it cute. Lest we forget, there were also three singularly encouraging debuts.

There was also some ill-discipline, notably the costly first-half penalties against Paddy Johns and Keith Wood, as well as some untypical missed tackles, and they were punished like never before. No-one knew better than a redeyed Denis Hickie afterwards that Stefan Terblanche's record-equalling, four-try dream debut for the Springboks constituted a personal nightmare of a game for him.

Ultimately though, the Springboks's collective individual superiority, as it were, wore Ireland down. Their greater upper body strength and technique enabled them to break more tackles and offload in the tackle to support runners more often. This in turn meant that Ireland had to make more tackles.

Admittedly, this was always likely to be the case. Ireland have to work harder for their scores than most international teams and also have to work harder to prevent scores against them. It's just that the hard-work ethic and the tackle count are of such a high standard under Gatland that it was disappointing to see them ship four second-half tries, of which two could be considered soft by this team's benchmark.

Gatland provided his own cutting verdict on this without recourse to words, when replacing Hickie with Rob Henderson after the St Mary's winger had badly missed Terblanche for the latter's fourth try - McGuinness then letting the try-scorer wheel out of the scrum-half's tackle.

Later on Saturday evening, Gatland complimented Nick Mallett and the Springboks's backroom team for research well done.

"If you had looked at the tapes of some of our earlier games, we would have been vulnerable when teams have come down our left wing. And that was exposed badly again today. It's just an area we need to tidy up on and do a lot of work on. I think we can improve there."

Still, there had been plenty of positives to take out of the game. The scoreboard confirmed, ominously, that the edgy Springboks found their confidence in the last 20 minutes, particularly Percy Montgomery, but this was never really one of those facile southern hemisphere v northern hemisphere home whuppings which are liable to be commonplace against the other home unions this summer.

Punters who took Ireland at 5/6 with an almost insulting 39-point handicap were cruising for the afternoon.

The 19th-minute try which saw Ireland deservedly claw their way back into the lead encapsulated many of the team's strengths.

Malcolm O'Kelly's rubberised take, Elwood's pin-point up-and-under, and the flying Justin Bishop took an astonishing, leaping catch at full tilt above Percy Montgomery. Of its type, it was an excellent try.

Some porous second-half defending aside, the trademark strengths were there in force. As Donal Lenihan said afterwards, the tight five have now proven their mettle consistently enough over the past year against all-comers for this to be regarded as a reliable team virtue.

Not unexpectedly, Keith Wood and Paul Wallace underlined their status as genuine world-class players, while Justin Fitzpatrick rose to the occasion and grew impressively i his role. The brilliance of O'Kelly and Paddy Johns at lineouts and restarts, their high tacklecount and mobility and intelligence around the field (O'Kelly saving a probable try from Gaffie du Toit's chip and chase) we take for granted. But of course we shouldn't.

The back-row came up against a classy trio, but emerged with some credit. Dion O'Cuinneagain almost immediately moved up a notch when reverting to number eight and was good close-in, if generally a little tighter than he or Gatland would have liked. Victor Costello again proved he is as good a rumbler off the base of the scrum as there is around and Andy Ward did some really good open-side defensive work, close-in and wide out, though he missed the increasingly elusive and troublesome Montgomery badly in the build-up to the Mark Andrews try and wasn't able to recycle ball when moves broke down wide out.

Individually, there were some good performances in the backs: Elwood generally, Maggs for his driving play and yardage haul, the industrious Bishop and the composed O'Shea.

However, when it comes to improving the team's offensive abilities, there's only so much that Ireland can do. There were two periods when Ireland were pressing hard and most needed a score during the second half. The first, after 46 minutes, saw Maggs make one of several bursts and might have offloaded to O'Kelly before Mark McCall went for a gap and was stopped short.

Again, around the hour mark, Maggs and McCall failed to complete a loop going from left to right with Bishop in space and then McCall and Conor O'Shea overplayed the ball with Hickie awaiting a run - both times the ball going over the touch-line around half-way.

The answer to this ongoing limitation? "Find some new players?" chuckled Gatland. "Small (McCall) is not quick enough or big enough to break tackles, so we try to use his talents as best we can, and even on the outside we're not as physically big and strong as they are. We just don't have their sheer pace and size at the moment, and I don't know where you're going to find it from."

A sign of the times maybe after a 37-13 defeat, but you can't fault this Irish team for not making the best of what they have.