Jeremy Guscott: The spirit of braveheart England will not be broken

At no point in this Test did England look like winning. And at no stage did their spirit look like waning. Stuart Lancaster wants progression from his young side and he got it in Johannesburg when they fought themselves back into a seemingly lost cause with grit, determination and courage.
Yes, there are serious areas for them to work on this week before the final Test at sea level in Port Elizabeth on Saturday.
They have to sort out their tackling for a start. I know Bismarck du Plessis is a big, strong man but when he goes over the line with three England players wrapped around him something is wrong.
He can’t run without his legs and nor can any of the other Springbok musclemen.
England must learn to send one man low and one man high to stop the offload.
Captain Chris Robshaw works hard and tackles well, but he has to stop giving away penalties. He conceded three crucial ones here and each stopped the momentum of his side.
I still want to see him and Tom Johnson carrying more, like Thomas Waldrom did when he came on in the second half, but I also want to see that penalty count drop.
Morne Steyn was not at his best with the boot here. But we know what he can do and he won’t have two off-days in a row.
Going into the game Lancaster’s big dilemma was over Owen Farrell, and he handled it well. He spoke to the young man about his demotion to the bench and then he spoke to him again a day later once he had had a chance to digest the disappointment. That is good man management.
Lancaster said he was not afraid to go with his gut instinct and that told him to re-instate Toby Flood at ten depite Farrell’s fine performances during the Six Ntions.
That decision was fully vindicated. The Tigers fly-half contributed 17 points with a try, three conversions and two penalties and proved a fine foil for scrum-half Ben Youngs.
Youngs had his best game for quite a while, contributing two tries, the first of which was  so brave as he went over with Bismarck du Plessis hanging round his neck. That should have been a penalty try and, while we are on the subject of questionable refereeing, the opening Bok try should never have been allowed.
I’ve watched the replays and the ball clearly came straight through the scrum without touching a player before Willem Alberts picked up to dive over down the blind side. Assistant referee Steve Walsh should have alerted Alain Rolland to the situation but Walsh just stood there like a lampost with the light off.
England’s scrum had considerable problems in the first half and was destroyed on occasions. But the flip side was that as the Boks made their substitutions their scrum was driven back in the second half and  England were on the front foot and looking potent.
In Port Elizabeth, Flood must now  get his three-quarter line moving. We saw England’s first back-line move of this series after ten minutes when Flood broke free and, had he heard the shout of Ben Morgan outside him it could well have come to something.
Now Flood has to get Manu Tuilagi and Jonathan Joseph working. They can be a potent force and worry the  Boks given the right service.
This England side is like a mighty sponge. It is able to absorb pressure, soak up the problems and do its best to find some answers.
Everyone thought this would be a destruction and it looked as if it might be as the Boks scored at the rate of a point a minute in the opening 20  minutes of the first half.
But from 25-10 at the interval, England went about winning the second half. Too many turnovers – England conceded 16 compared to South Africa’s six – proved an insurmountable problem in the end.
But England deserve great credit for never giving up. Lancaster’s men kept their heads up and battled to the end.
They are not a side that can consistently worry the best just yet despite their fine Six Nations showing against Ireland and France.
But with three years to go to the World Cup, I can see what Lancaster is trying to build.
It’s progress – and we must hope for more next weekend.