Defeat against South Africa will reduce expectations on New Zealand - Ian Foster

New Zealand head coach Ian Foster reckons the defeat in the warm-up game against South Africa at Twickenham Stadium will help in the reduction of expectations on them.

Having claimed the Rugby Championship and the Bledisloe Cup, the All Blacks were among the favourties to lift the World Cup for a record fourth time but their momentum took a beating as they were inflicted with a 7-35 side against Jacques Nienaber's men on Saturday.

As New Zealand had Scott Barrett and skipper Sam Cane sin-binned in the opening quarter, the Boks riding on tries from Siya Kolisi, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Malcolm Marx, Mbongeni Mbonambi and Kwagga Smith made a strong statement as they look to defend the World Cup title and Foster wanted to see the positive aspect of the result.

"We know the circumstances we're in and the goal we're looking for," said Foster.

"You can't deny it wasn't a good performance from us. We've got a couple of weeks to get that right but I fully believe we can.

"That performance is going to take a lot of heat off us. No one is going to rate us now which is quite nice. We'll just prepare quietly and get stuck in."

Crediting South Africa for their physicality in the game, Foster urged the side to improve the discipline heading into the showpiece event.

"We lost the cohesion when we were put under pressure, but I thought our defence in the first 20 minutes was outstanding and if we had more discipline in key areas we could have counter-punched," he added.

"You couldn't help but be impressed with what they [South Africa] did, they really got stuck into us.

"Their physicality and their set-piece was superb and they had a massive game at scrum and line-out time - that was a big difference.

"They forced us into errors and that caused us problems."