The Springboks were one point away from replacing Ireland as the top-ranked team in World Rugby’s latest Test rankings.
An 18-3 victory over Scotland on Sunday saw the Springboks get their World Cup title defence off to a successful start.
However, the Boks narrowly missed out on dethroning Ireland, who thrashed Romania 82-8, as the world’s number-one team.
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According to the World Rugby website, South Africa fell one point short of the margin of victory needed to replace Ireland, with World Cup fixtures offering double the ranking points.
Ireland’s rating of 91.82 points but that would have been bettered by South Africa had they managed to beat Scotland by more than 15 points.
Instead, the Springboks were just thankful to get through a hard-fought encounter with a 15-point win, which leaves them just 0.15 ranking points adrift of Ireland, going into the second round of the tournament.
France and New Zealand stay in third and fourth place after Les Bleus came out on top when the sides met in the opening fixture in Paris on Friday.
The big changes came in the bottom half of the top 10, where England moved up to sixth place after a remarkable 27-10 win against Argentina in Marseille, closing the gap on Scotland to just 0.21 points.
Los Pumas, who lost despite playing against 14 men for all but two minutes of the contest following Tom Curry’s early red card, have fallen four places to 10th – their lowest position in almost three years.
Australia are immediately below England in seventh after they also gained two places for their 35-15 win against Georgia, while Wales’ reward for holding off Fiji in a thrilling finale to the weekend is a climb of two places to eighth.
Photo: Twitter: @Springboks