Connacht captain Andrew Farley on Tuesday praised his team for putting up a “massive effort” against South Africa, despite going down 3-18 to the Springboks at the Sportsground in Galway.

The Irish side will take heart from a game that was a World Cup warm-up match for the Boks and a pre-season outing for the home side.

Connacht were more than a match for a below par Bok side, keeping the tourists to single figures on the scoreboard till the final 15 minutes.

In fact Connacht were trailing just 3-8 and in with a chance of a real upset, before a late Jacques Cronjé try sealed the game for the Boks.

The Irish provincial side, expecting a fierce physical confrontation from the South Africans, displayed real courage to keep in touch with the ‘mighty’ Boks on the scoreboard for most of the match.

“We knew the physicality from South Africa would be massive and we knew we had to match it up front right away and we did that in the game,” Farley said.

The Connacht forwards may have been under pressure in the scrums, but they contested very well in the line-outs, disrupting the Springboks’ ball, and also contested the breakdown.

The fiery approach of the home team paid off and the Boks failed to find any sort of rhythm.

“We knew we had a really difficult job ahead of us and I’d really like to thank my boys for a hard-fought effort throughout match,” Farley said.

The game may not have been pretty, but the men from Galway put in a great performance to keep the Boks down to just a 3-0 lead at half-time.

“We knew we had done a massive job in the first half holding them down to three points,” said Farley.

“We knew they would come out firing after half-time, so we knew what we had to do was weather the storm for the next ten minutes – which we didn’t do unfortunately and that’s what let them into the game.

“All we had to do [to keep the score down] was continue our hard work in defence that shut them out of the first half.”

The side more than met their own expectations in the pre-season clash, as they produced a really good display against the Springboks.

“It was a very good build-up [to the season] for us. With a fixture like South Africa, just after a very hard pre-season, doing well was a massive goal that we all looked forward to,” said Farley.