Coach Peter de Villiers admits Springboks fans have every right to feel disillusioned less than a month before South Africa launch their Rugby World Cup defence in New Zealand.

But de Villiers and captain John Smit urged fans to keep the faith despite the full-strength Boks fading to a 14-9 loss to Australia in Durban.

The defeat was South Africa's eighth in their past nine Tri Nations encounters and proved particularly tough to swallow for Smit in his 105th Test and last in front of his Kings Park home crowd.

"Fairytales don't always happen," he said.

"It's a horrible Test to lose because it felt like we had reasonable amount of control but we just didn't convert it.

"We had sufficient turnovers produced by reasonably good defence for a change and we didn't use those turnovers as well as we should have.

"It was frustrating. We need to be more ruthless ... the guys should be disillusioned because we should have won this Test match."

The Boks fielded their most experienced Test side ever, but most ageing stars were playing their first games in almost two months after de Villiers rested them during the first two matches of the tournament in Australasia.

Smit was suitably concerned when the home side only led 6-0 despite dominating possession and territory in the first half.

"After the kind of rugby we played, I knew full well that the majority of the guys probably weren't going to be firing come 70 minutes," he said.

"Credit to the Aussies, they just kept coming and kept playing well and kept the pressure on us.

"It's disappointing to lose, but there's a lot to draw from this.

"It's certainly not something the guys wanted, to lose a Test. There's always a bit of doubt when you lose but it's how you bounce back."

The Springboks host the All Blacks in Port Elizabeth on Saturday and Smit said a big showing was imperative.

"These guys have had to bounce back a few times and there needs to be a little bit more bouncing back coming into this next weekend," he said.

"Certainly to get ourselves in a positive frame of mind getting onto the aeroplane.

"We don't want to be a team saying: 'Judge us on the World Cup'. We need to start playing some rugby before we get there."

De Villiers was also confident the Boks could turn their fortunes around.

"The people should be disillusioned, rightfully so. I would have been myself too," the coach confessed.

"Losing will never be a great thing in my life and it can become a habit very easily but the way we progressed from where we were, it's a good start.

"When we controlled the game in the first half, we looked very, very good. We just have to build from there.

"We'll bounce back from that. It's not good to lose the game but for me we lost the game on the scoreboard only."

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