Wales went down to a 24-15 loss to the Springboks despite five penalties from the boot of the metronomic Leigh Halfpenny.
Tries from captain Jean de Villiers, hooker Bismarck du Plessis and a second half effort from scrum half Fourie du Preez earned the win for Heyneke Meyer’s side.
Wales were not helped by a number of significant injuries. Jonathan Davies, Liam Williams and Adam Jones were all forced off during a hugely physical first 40 minutes. Scott Andrews, who himself was a replacement, also went off injured as the intensity of the game led to its fair share of casualties.
Here’s what Wales boss Gatland had to say in the immediate aftermath of today’s game.
“There were some missed opportunities. We were in the game and we’ve conceded some soft tries. It was the worst we’ve been aerially for some time and that’s normally a strength of ours.
“There are some things for us to work on but there are a huge amount of positives. For the players and where they’ve come from, this was a huge step up in intensity.
“I think we handled the injuries really well. We were already without two key players in Jamie Roberts and Alex Cuthbert so to lose a couple quite early on in the first half was disruptive but the boys handled it well.
“Possession and territory were pretty equal. We created more clean line breaks than they did but they were good in the air – that put us under pressure and we perhaps didn’t communicate as well as we could have. We didn’t handle that area of pressure which as I say, is normally a strength of ours.
“We’ll continue to work on our battle in the air but sometimes you have those days and today wasn’t one of our good ones.
“We’ve got Argentina and then Tonga and for us, you feel like we’ve gone one step forward and two steps back.
“The southern hemisphere teams have been together for a few months playing in the Rugby Championship and you could see that. They were pretty organised, didn’t make a lot of mistakes and the turnovers were probably the telling factor between the two teams.
“They’re a good side and we would have learnt a lot from today. Bring on the next three games.”
