South Africa's loss to Argentina on Saturday spells bad news for the Wallabies, who will now face a "win at all costs" Springboks side.
The 32-19 loss in Mendoza on Saturday brought the Springboks back to earth after a comfortable opening Rugby Championship win over the South Americans in Durban.
It also prompted coach Rassie Erasmus to shelve plans to do some pre-World Cup experimentation with his team in their next outing against the winless Wallabies in Brisbane in two weeks.
"We had certain plans that we wanted to try against Australia, but that's out the window now," Erasmus told reporters.
"We have to get back to winning ways again, it's win at all costs now.
"This puts us back quite a bit. We wanted to win this game and give a few other guys a chance against Australia but we can't do that now."
The Springboks were 20 points down at half-time on Saturday, outscored by four tries to three and despite dominating the second half, committed a litany of errors to always be up against it.
"I'm not going to look for positives after a performance like that. We have no excuses, we knew exactly what to expect, we prepared for it but we just didn't handle it," Erasmus said
"We played like a team that's playing club rugby," he told broadcaster SuperSport.
"I must point the finger at myself. When you play like this, the coach did something badly wrong during the week.
"It's not an excuse, because we are picking and coaching the team, but with the youngsters (in the team), they're going to go through these games when they are rattled and they have to learn how to handle it.
"I don't want to say we learn, we learn, we learn. We had a terrible performance, it was unacceptable ... we can't perform like that in a Springbok jersey."
The Wallabies host the Springboks in Brisbane on Saturday September 8, kicking off at 8pm AEST, LIVE on FOX SPORTS, Channel Ten and via RUGBY.com.au RADIO. Buy tickets here.
