Ruan Pienaar, Danie Rossouw, Adrian Jacobs, Jaque Fourie and Bryan Habana all scored tries for the world champions, but all England could muster were two penalties from Danny Cipriani, who again failed to live up to his billing as the country’s most promising talent.

“They gave us a lesson in certain areas of the game,” said Johnson.

“Obviously the main one was scoring tries, turning pressure into points. They defended very, very well.

“They are a very good team. They’ve got some very powerful guys and when they got in our half they didn’t mess around. And their kicking game was better than ours.

“But I think if Danny Care had been playing in the Premiership he would have had a couple of tries, but the gaps he’d normally go through he didn’t get through and they always managed to get an arm on him.”

Despite being outclassed again in their sixth consecutive defeat to the Springboks and regularly showing poor decision-making, Johnson reaffirmed his intention to stick with the same players for next week’s Test against New Zealand.

The All Blacks, ranked number one in the world, are perhaps an even tougher prospect than South Africa, but Johnson insisted his young side must be given time to improve and claimed there were positives to take from today’s game.

“We created opportunities but just didn’t take them,” he continued. “I thought we were still in the game at half-time.

“But we didn’t turn pressure and opportunities into points. We had some gilt-edged chances but they defended very well.

“Territory-wise we were fine. We had enough of the game.

“I am backing these guys. Yes, they all made mistakes at times but they all did good things today.

“Our aim is to be as good as we can be as quickly as we can. They’ve gone through three tough games and taken steps the whole way. This is another step.

“We have to go through it to get to where we want to be.”