Close, but still no cigar for Steve Hansen's Wales. His well-drilled side were even more impressive in the Cape Town rain than in their 34-19 first Test defeat. But there is no hiding from the fact that this was the coach's fifth defeat in six matches and, statistically at least, little has changed since the dog days of Graham Henry's reign.
Still, the tourists had the better line-out and scrum, and controlled even larger portions of the match than they had in Bloemfontein a week before. Where they were found wanting was in cracking the code of a Springbok defence that had also improved over the intervening seven days.
The Welsh forwards were held when they tried to drive close to the ruck and the midfield of Mark Taylor and the South African-born Andy Marinos were snuffed out.
When a Welsh try levelled the scores just after the interval, it was thanks to some judicious thinking from the No8 and captain Colin Charvis, who ran from two metres out at the smallest man on the field, the 5ft 6in Springbok scrum-half Johannes Conradie.
Charvis and his back-row partners Michael Owen and Martyn Williams were outstanding and the Welsh line-out was never troubled by a Springbok combination still at the base of its own learning curve.
South Africa had to wait until the 70th minute and Andre Pretorius's third penalty before gaining breathing space at 14-8. It was only in the final five minutes that replacement scrum-half Craig Davidson scored their second try to kill off a Welsh side that ends the season with reason to look forward to 2003.
South Africa: Russell; Terblanche, Joubert, Barry, Paulse; Pretorius, Conradie (Davidson, 52); Human (Le Roux, 59), Dalton, Meyer (Rautenbach, 52), Davids (Louw, 63), Labuschagne, Krige, Venter (Van Niekerk, 63), Skinstad (capt).
Tries: Russell, Davidson. Pens: Pretorius 3.
Wales: K Morgan; R Williams, Taylor, Marinos (Shanklin, 67), C Morgan (Jenkins, 76); Jones, Peel (Powell, 12); I Thomas, McBryde (Davies, 76), Evans, Llewellyn (Sidoli, 70), S Williams, Owen, M Williams (G Thomas, 67), Charvis (capt).
Try: Charvis. Pen: Jones.
Attendance: 42,500.
Referee: A Spreadbury (England).
