Schalk Burger says South Africa have learned their lessons from the painful World Cup quarterfinal defeat to Australia four years ago.

Despite dominating possession and territory against the Wallabies, the defending champions lost 11-9 in Wellington, and Burger is hoping for a different outcome against Wales in Saturday's last-eight meeting in Cardiff. 

"I suppose over a lot of bottles of red wine we have discussed that match more than any other match we have ever played," said 2007 World Cup-winner Burger.

"It is one of those games that still haunts you to this day. If we played it again, we would win nine times out of 10. That game we played all the rugby, but it was scoreboard pressure.

Schalk Burger© Jan Hendrik Kruger/Getty Images

"That's the biggest thing that we learnt. It doesn't matter how much rugby you play, if you don't build scoreboard pressure on the opposition then you end up losing the match.

"Hopefully for us, we don't have a repeat of that for this quarter-final." 

If South Africa lift the Webb Ellis Cup at Twickenham on October 31, they will be the first side to do so after losing a pool game, having kicked off their tournament with a shock 34-32 defeat to Japan.

But the Springboks recovered by reeling off three victories in a row to top Pool B, capped off by a 64-0 win over the United States.

"It's been like my career with ups and downs," said Burger, 32, who two years ago was fighting for his life after suffering a potentially-fatal bacterial meningitis infection.

"We started with the most famous loss in World Cup history against Japan and after that the next two weeks were probably my toughest as a Springbok.

"Coming back to win against Samoa and Scotland, luckily enough we turned the corner, and topped our group. What's important about this group is we have pressed the reset button after we had that loss and now we have to concentrate on winning a quarter-final."