In fact‚ watching the hosts dismantle Ireland and Scotland in the pool stages should have left Erasmus with the nagging feeling that maybe Japan head coach Joseph was keeping his powder dry in that friendly.
Had they beaten the Boks‚ it would have put Ireland on high alert in their pool match.
“They have‚” said Erasmus when asked if he thought Japan had improved.
“I think we have improved too since our first game against the All Blacks. I think we are in for a great contest.”
The coach admits warm-up game carried no real pressure.
“It will be interesting to see how both teams handle the pressure.”
With such a big media contingent it was almost inevitable the coach was going to be asked about the Springboks defeat to Japan at the 2015 RWC.
Erasmus is comfortable his players got that game out of their system.
“The reason for that warm-up game was to erase the Brighton game‚ so that if we play them in a play-off game that game hopefully does not get mentioned again‚" he said.
"It is one-all now. Now we go into the quarterfinals against a really tough team.”