Reigning international player of the year Bryan Habana has virtually blamed himself for South Africa's 16-9 Tri-Nations loss to Australia at Subiaco Oval.

Habana came close to scoring a try in the 66th minute when the score was 13-6 to Australia, but a classy Springboks backline move was snuffed out by a last ditch Ryan Cross tackle.

Habana couldn't ground the ball as he dived for the corner, one of at least three South African chances that went begging as the Wallabies scored a two tries to nil victory.

"For the standards I set myself I feel I let the team down in that situation and I think I should have maybe finished off better after having played a lot of rugby," Habana said.

"I've played at the highest level for so long I think that maybe I could have done a little bit better.

"For the pressure I put on myself to make a difference and make a huge contribution to this team, I let myself personally down this evening and .... (I let) the team down as well.

"So credit to Ryan Cross."

In an extraordinary display of self criticism, an unprompted Habana continued to beat himself up.

"At the end of the day we the Springbok team pride ourselves on execution on specific things and I wasn't able to execute," he continued.

"At the end of the day you don't get many opportunities on the international circuit to execute ... we had a couple of executions tonight which didn't go to plan and that probably cost us the game more than what the Wallabies really beat us."

Springboks coach Peter de Villiers was also left ruing what might have been.

"Maybe it was over-anxiousness and guys want to do good, they just want to play for their country and they want to be the best in the world," he said.

"When you're like that you sometimes make mistakes."

De Villiers was also unhappy with the refereeing of the breakdown by New Zealander Bryce Lawrence.

"There's a lot of things that went wrong that you can't discuss here, bring yourself in trouble again," he said.

"It's always frustrating if there's inconsistency ... we just have to live with it."

The South Africans head home with an historic victory over New Zealand, which briefly reaffirmed the Springboks' status as the world's best, and a bonus point from Saturday night's match.

"We as a team are not really very satisfied," de Villiers said.

"We didn't do what we came to do but then again we got from that the bonus and the bonus is that we're going back home now and we can build from there."

Their remaining three matches of the series are against New Zealand in Cape Town on August 16, Australia in Durban on August 23 and the Wallabies again in Johannesburg on August 30.

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