Scotland vs South Africa, 13th November 2021

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Scotland vs South Africa
1pm, Saturday 13th November 2021
Amazon Prime
BT Murrayfield Stadium
Edinburgh

Ref: Angus Gardner (Aus)

Not sure what to expect from Scotland as injuries could put a bit of pressure on the pack selections. Skinner was good against Australia and our alternatives are recalling a recalcitrant R Gray, starting a very green Hodgson or asking for 60 minutes from Cummings off an injury. Whilst Ashman got plaudits for his try and grew into the game, he also made some basic errors that can't be made against T1 sides and losing Turner would leave us choosing between him and a relatively undercooked McInally. In the backs, Steyn will likely come into the starters after a decent cameo but some analysis will be needed on how to create line-breaks against a strong rush defensive centre pairing of De Allende - Am.

For South Africa, the team is likely the same 23 as vs Wales, only possible changes could be Nkosi has sorted out his passport issues and will be back in the mix, and Fassi might come in for Willemse who failed an HIA. As for Bok tactics, it is very simple and there is nothing sinister or mysterious about it. If you look at their complete arsenal of attack, it is mauls, exploiting penalty advantage, counter, grubber kicks in the 22 and kick pass. The biggest weakness of the Boks is their predictable phase attack, they don't offload, they don't pass much, they don't really run angles to expose weak shoulders and they don't change the point of contact.

Scotland
Schoeman - McInally - Z Fagerson (Bhatti - Ashman - Kebble)
Skinner - Gilchrist (Hodgson)
Haining - M Fagerson - Ritchie (Watson)

Price - Russell (G Horne - Hastings)
Scott - Harris
DVDM - Hogg - McClean (Kinghorn)

South Africa
Nche - Mbonambi - Nyakane (Kitsoff - Marx - Koch)
Etzebeth - Mostert (De Jager)
Kolisi - Vermeulen - Smith (Wiese)

Jantjies - Jantjies (Reiach - Pollard)
De Allende - Am
Mapimpi - Le Roux - Kriel (Steyn)

Is someone somewhere playing the Benny Hill theme tune?

Can I change my option on the poll to the last one?

Well done SA, that was impressive

You gave us a bit of a lesson today!

WTF was that "pass" from Blairhorn? Summed up the second half for Scotland.
Ritchie an international 7? Not for me.

Well played Scotland, momentum went the Boks way in the second half.

Reinach ten times better than Jantjies.

Some great tires from both teams.

Boks really need to work on their attack, too predictable.

I don't think this was a disaster from a Scotland standpoint. From what I saw, second half only, Scotland were completely in it until a couple of lost lineouts, especially the one down deep in the Bok end (bad decision and worse execution). Also, Boks are world champs for a reason. Can't give an inch.

No 7&1/2 wrote:

tigertattie wrote:

BigGee wrote:Two spilled lineouts!

We’re doing an excellent job of foot shooting today.

We’re just not playing with the top 2 inches

Neither is Koch.

Yep Koch conceded three penalties in the match, had a couple of great runs though

Well that there is exactly how teams can beat Scotland with ease

Play basic rugby. Keep the ball as much as you can and make Scotland go into rabbit in the headlight modes

We were out muscled in every area of the field and SA did was SA do well and strangled the life out of us.

Would have been better if we’d stuck out an amateur side to stick the ball up their jumper and just try to keep the score line down

Impressive SA win. They do what they do and there was little we could do about it. Our pack, and back row in particular were overwhelmed for large portions of the game.

Yep, Bok physicality won them the second half.

However I think Scotland are a very good team, they have an uncanny ability to relieve pressure and turn it into attack.

Bok standouts, Starting front row, Etzebeth, Kolisi, Vermeulen, De Allende, Am, Kriel chased well and defended well, Mapimpi finished well.

Bomb squad bar Pollard were all excellent.

Mostert, Kwagga, Elton Jantjies and Le Roux were average.

Herschel Jantjies was just crap, his service behnid the ruck caused the Boks problems

Thanks Old Man, but unless we can develop a harder edge in the tight we won't win games against physical teams on a regular basis.
I know your boys are world champs but they rarely looked like they needed to get out of 3rd gear to beat us fairly comprehensively.

Old Man wrote:Yep, Bok physicality won them the second half.

However I think Scotland are a very good team, they have an uncanny ability to relieve pressure and turn it into attack.

We reverted to type today old man. We went into panic mode for huge parts of the game.

The first Scotland try was simple broken field harem scarem stuff. The second try was a well executed move. That was the only bit of structure we had the whole game.

A huge part of that was SA played their structured power game well, the other part was Finn Russell, so called best 10 in world rugby, had an utter mare and had as much control as unicycle going down a bobsled track

sensisball wrote:Thanks Old Man, but unless we can develop a harder edge in the tight we won't win games against physical teams on a regular basis.
I know your boys are world champs but they rarely looked like they needed to get out of 3rd gear to beat us fairly comprehensively.

The problem with Nienaber is his game plan doesn't put teams away as we don't have a good attack, or variation in attack.

He works on this slow poison mantra that we should gain ascendancy in the second half and win those halves. But if we get behind by more than a score the pressure is on us, and as you have seen, we spent 15 minutes in the Scottish 22 for no points.

Russell always plays loose and for the majority it works well. Thought it was the missed kicks though that put the dagger through Scottish hearts. Kickable pens would have actually opened up a little gap and when they weren't going over it was always heaping pressure on to do something special.

It was really a horrible performance, whenever we had momentum we just gave it straight back. Can’t think of any sustained attacking period in the game, I love Russell but far from his best game today. The pack just woeful in every facet. Very disappointing performance our worse home defeat in 7 years, also the Irish guy and deplort were unbearable in the commentary.

tigertattie wrote:

Old Man wrote:Yep, Bok physicality won them the second half.

However I think Scotland are a very good team, they have an uncanny ability to relieve pressure and turn it into attack.

We reverted to type today old man. We went into panic mode for huge parts of the game.

The first Scotland try was simple broken field harem scarem stuff. The second try was a well executed move. That was the only bit of structure we had the whole game.

A huge part of that was SA played their structured power game well, the other part was Finn Russell, so called best 10 in world rugby, had an utter mare and had as much control as unicycle going down a bobsled track

Without doubt Finn Russell is a talented player, But I listened to him on a podcast this week, can't remember what it is called, he seemed too confident, he also criticised how the Lions played.

The thing is no matter how talented yuor backline is you still need to win the collisions.

Australia was the only team that managed to outplay us in a test this year, main reason we lost our structure in that match and they exploited our errors.

I agree you can break the Boks down with excellent play, but you need to gain parity in set piece and collisions.

I would like to see the match stats, I think SA had the majority of the possession and territory.

No 7&1/2 wrote:Russell always plays loose and for the majority it works well. Thought it was the missed kicks though that put the dagger through Scottish hearts. Kickable pens would have actually opened up a little gap and when they weren't going over it was always heaping pressure on to do something special.

This is my problem with Finn.

Look at Jonny Sexton. In terms of perfect play he plays at what, 70-85% of peak stand off performance. Dan Carter was 80-90%.

Russell floats between 50-90%. When he’s great he’s the best but when he’s not he can be utterly terrible. Today was one of those days. He didn’t play with structure and tried to force things when sent his team scarpering backwards.

tigertattie wrote:

No 7&1/2 wrote:Russell always plays loose and for the majority it works well. Thought it was the missed kicks though that put the dagger through Scottish hearts. Kickable pens would have actually opened up a little gap and when they weren't going over it was always heaping pressure on to do something special.

This is my problem with Finn.

Look at Jonny Sexton. In terms of perfect play he plays at what, 70-85% of peak stand off performance. Dan Carter was 80-90%.

Russell floats between 50-90%. When he’s great he’s the best but when he’s not he can be utterly terrible. Today was one of those days. He didn’t play with structure and tried to force things when sent his team scarpering backwards.

Finn is Finn and he gave us some magic for the tries but you can't compare him to Sexton who rarely, if ever plays behind a pack getting as badly stuffed as we were today

It is very hard to create effective play when your forwards are getting mashed in the scrum, spilling lineout ball and your back row can't carry more than 6 inches before getting shunted backwards.
How often do the Irish pack not give Sexton front foot for significant portions of the match?
Be interesting to see how he goes today with basically the Leinster 8 against the blackness pack

If a pack is conceding penalties at almost every scrum.
If your line out isn't putting any sustained pressure on the opposition.
Then your 10 is going to struggle.

Yes the 10 will struggle but if you’re going backwards, boot the ball deep. Finn kept doing round the back or one handed passes.

Even when going forward he was really poor today

Just caught up on the game. Despite the collapse I thought the players did well to expose SA on numerous occasions. It was way way too loose again though. That’s a concern heading into the 6N in my opinion. It was such a shame to botch that attacking lineout when the game was still in the balance. And then mess up the next one too.

In the end though the Boks power game was enough as expected.

The ref was great I thought, he did a really good job and was very fair on Scotland and SA.

Congrats Boks fans! Great game and well deserved victory.

sensisball wrote:It is very hard to create effective play when your forwards are getting mashed in the scrum, spilling lineout ball and your back row can't carry more than 6 inches before getting shunted backwards.
How often do the Irish pack not give Sexton front foot for significant portions of the match?
Be interesting to see how he goes today with basically the Leinster 8 against the blackness pack

Quite well it would seem haha. Sorry couldn’t resist. Very impressive win from Ireland, they’re mounting a big challenge for the 6N.

Aw man sounds like s disappointing performance where the Boks smashed us up front. Shame to hear about our errors and rabbit in the headlights play.

Well done Boks!

Yes, I didn’t see it but it sounds like we just got mashed and didn’t have any control. Sounds like a slow horror show. Again, we are still 2 world class locks, another test class loosehead and a heavyweight no 8 away from ever seriously challenging for the world’s top 5.

To be fair, our two best locks were not playing!

I have got less to offer on the no.8 unfortunately, though Matt Fagerson by no means had a bad game

BigGee wrote:To be fair, our two best locks were not playing!

I have got less to offer on the no.8 unfortunately, though Matt Fagerson by no means had a bad game

To be fair you cannot say you lost to a better side because your 2 best locks was not playing.

On the day Scotland was not good enough to beat the world champions.

It was a good game but in the end Scotland was not good enough to win on the day. better luck for next week.

Our pack has been doing OK considering we have lost PSDT and RG Snyman to injuries for the most part of 2021, but it is our backline that has been struggling on attack.

In 2019 our first choice backline was De Klerk, Pollard, Kolbe, De Allende, Mapimpi and Le Roux.

Le Roux made a lot of tries for us in 2019 as a second playmaker, but he has lost his ability under the high ball (been very inconsistent) and he has been struggling with execution.

Kolbe was our make something out of nothing, and without him we have no X factor in our backline.

For this match Herschel Jantjies as the starting nine makes no sense, when he made his debut in 2019 he scored against the Wallabies twice and also against NZ, but since then he has been sub par.

Elton was average today and when replaced by Pollard nothing changed, Pollard has been struggling for form the whole year.

De Allende, Am and Mapimpi have been solid all season.

We simply don't have the quality of depth we think we have.

You don't just play a top team like Scotland without the players that make such a difference on attack.

We miss Snyman's impact off the bench, Kwagga Smith is decent, but he ain't no PSDT, Faf is pedantic behind the ruck at times, but Jantjies is many steps behind, we need another 10, When Pollard is off form, we cannot rely on Elton to win games, Kriel hasn't played much this year and with both Kolbe and Nkosi unavailable our back line just isn't potent.

majesticimperialman wrote:

BigGee wrote:To be fair, our two best locks were not playing!

I have got less to offer on the no.8 unfortunately, though Matt Fagerson by no means had a bad game

To be fair you cannot say you lost to a better side because your 2 best locks was not playing.

On the day Scotland was not good enough to beat the world champions.

It was a good game but in the end Scotland was not good enough to win on the day. better luck for next week.

Not sure i was saying we lost because our best locks were not playing.

I just said our best locks were not playing.

We were well beaten and i am not making any excuses. Every team has injuries to deal with.

GC was making a point about where our team could be improved and it would likely be improved by having our best locks, currently Gray and Cummings playing!

Currently watching the game with the world feed. I normally like the old Northern Irish guy but he's pretty irritating this game.

You should have watched the All Blacks game with the RTE commentary. It was so one eyed I spent half the match laughing. They instantly had Coles sent off for a slightly high left hand on Sexton’s shoulder.

Then again, maybe that’s how Andy Nicol sounds to non-Scots.

Well that wasn't the best of games actually - certainly not one that will love long in the memory!  Both teams scored some nice tries but it was a very stop start game.

It's funny to be disappointed after losing to the world championships and #1 team in the world! Gone are the days of us just hoping to keep the score down however, and there is a lot of frustration as we (and the players) know we can play a lot, lot better than that. Of course we could play at our best and still likely lose to a team like SA, but at least we could say we went down swinging.

What this game reinforced is that we are now regularly competitive against the top 5 teams, but we need to 1 - have a near clean bill of health and 2 - play as close to 100% as we can to win. We had neither in this game. Our set piece in particular was a real letdown. Scrum you can't do much about against the Boks, but the lineout was incredibly disappointing as it should be in our control. There was a huge momentum swing on 50 minutes when we messed up the lineout on their line - that was game over.

Yes the Boks had a lot of injuries too but also fair to say vastly more resources to choose from. The Boks have 2 world class front rows - we had a startling front row that could hold their own against most teams, but then brought on Jamie Bhatti and Oli Kebble - the latter of which has only freshly moved to TH. Ashman was on his 2nd cap.

The Boks brought on Lood De Jager - we had Jamie Hodgeson playing his 3rd test.

Swap some of those players for Sutherland, Gray and Cummings and we look a whole lot stronger. Enough to beat the Boks? Again probably unlikely because they're the best team in the world and were probably 6/7th, but I think our pack would have been slightly less bullied. That's a Test Lion, our best lock of the last decade and a future star and potential captain. At the highest level we need that experience.


Number 8 is still an issue - what I would give for a rampaging No 8 like a Dombrant or Samu. Another backrow on the bench may have been beneficial after all.

What is most frustrating for me is that we're still not showing much progression in dealing with teams who are on top in the pack. We still force things and try miracle balls instead of trying to stay patient and hold onto the ball better. When you are struggling for possession you want to make sure you use it well when you do get the ball.

Finn did not have a good game, acknowledging the lack of platform up front. We know that if we want Finn at his best we have to accept him at his worst, but it's still frustrating that his worst is in the liability territory after all these years. We really could have done with a better goalkicking performance - that one on halftime was a killer. Does he just lose concentration? Bring back Greig!

Taking the positives though, we have struggled for tries against SA so it was good to score 2. VDM is showing that he's developing some more skills at this level. There were a few youngsters who will have had a rude awakening on just now far they still have to go to compete against the very best!

As for SA, they can keep going as they have been in the last year and still be one of the favourites for the next world cup, so why change anything? The fact that they can field at least 2 world class forward packs is frightening. You can't help feel frustrated at their lack of imagination in attack though - if they could add a bit more danger in the opposition 22 to their current gameplan they'd be heavy favourites. They had so much possession in our 22 in that first half in particular but went in down at halftime.

Again the Jantjies 9 has shown he's just not international class and surely a priority for the Boks is to develop more depth at halfback. I rate Reinach highly and for me he should start. Jantjies 10 had some nice touches.

Surely there must be other halfbacks in SA worth developing over the next 2 years?

RDW wrote:As for SA, they can keep going as they have been in the last year and still be one of the favourites for the next world cup, so why change anything? The fact that they can field at least 2 world class forward packs is frightening. You can't help feel frustrated at their lack of imagination in attack though - if they could add a bit more danger in the opposition 22 to their current gameplan they'd be heavy favourites. They had so much possession in our 22 in that first half in particular but went in down at halftime.

Again the Jantjies 9 has shown he's just not international class and surely a priority for the Boks is to develop more depth at halfback. I rate Reinach highly and for me he should start. Jantjies 10 had some nice touches.

Surely there must be other halfbacks in SA worth developing over the next 2 years?

I agree we have the foundation of a good team, our forward pack is strong, we for sure have two great front rows, the pillar for any team wanting to dominate set piece.

We have great second rows and enough depth.

Our back row is quality when you consider all players available. We do need to find a proper replacement for Vermeulen though.

As far as nines go we have Faf and Reinach, Jantjies is certainly not up there, there are a couple of nines like Hendrickse who oozes class but got injured in his first international match so couldn't push on from there.

At 10 we have a lack of depth.

Midfield is sorted when you look at De Allende, Esterhuizen, Am, Kriel.

Our back three is more or less there.

So 8, 10 and 15 I would say are our most concerning positions.

However, Nienaber is not giving guys opportunities.

What I would like to see is players like Elrich Louw, Evan Roos given opportunity at 8 and to add more depth Salman Moerat at lock.

At nine we need to see more of Jordan Hendrickse.

At ten we need to see Johan Goosen and Jaden Hendrickse get opportunity

At 15 we need to see Aphilile Fassi.

Those seven players can make a big difference to our depth.

There are a couple of smaller, nippy wings in the mould of Kolbe that could maybe step us as well.

The shortcoming for the Boks are along their spine of 8, 9, 10 and 15 that is very worrying.

Most importantly the Boks need to improve their variation on attack.

Two things to fix and we can win the RWC again, selection to build depth at those areas and better attacking structures

I guess part of the problem is the Boks play very few 'minnows' outside of the world cup to be able to bring in fresh blood with low risk. In the RC they go fully loaded every game. They then tour Europe and only play the best teams. Argentina are probably the weakest team within that but SA went full strength.

The NH teams.play at least one 2nd tier nation on November and our summer tours often play against them too - means we can bring players in with low risk.

Saying that - put an inexperienced 9 behind that pack and they should have a pleasant debut!

RDW wrote:I guess part of the problem is the Boks play very few 'minnows' outside of the world cup to be able to bring in fresh blood with low risk. In the RC they go fully loaded every game. They then tour Europe and only play the best teams. Argentina are probably the weakest team within that but SA went full strength.

The NH teams.play at least one 2nd tier nation on November and our summer tours often play against them too - means we can bring players in with low risk.

Saying that - put an inexperienced 9 behind that pack and they should have a pleasant debut!

Old Man, do you remember Cliff Roythorn?

I went on an RFU coaching course a few years ago and he was delivering the gospel. We were chatting during a break and he was telling me about his Boks debut (I think he got two caps). It was against the Pumas who were very much minnows back in those days. He said when their pack came out they were absolutely dwarfed by the Boks forwards. He thought he was in for a very good debut. At the first scrum as the Argies packed down he could hear them all chanting very softly, then he put the ball in and the Boks pack went back at a rate of knots. He was shocked. This kept up all day. The Boks won but he had a miserable day with a scrum that never got on top.

Nope, don't remember him, but yes technique plays a massive part in scrumming.

When I started playing club rugby I moved from flanker to loose head, the learning curve was huge and I had to learn very quickly.

My toughest opponent was an old toppie of 40, Iwas only early twenties then, he was short, squat and very strong. Couldn't move him an inch.

Not too much to add here. Boks had us on physicality and we lost composure for a fair bit of the game. I think Price and Russell are tremendous, but for the first time in a while I felt we missed wee Greg Laidlaw and that unerring boot of his.

I think for Japan Toonie ought to shake things up, starting with the centres.

As a poncey back I stayed well clear from the fatboys at training, but especially during pre-season we did a lot of wrestling drills and it was often unavoidable. You'd get the big lads who just used their bulk to smash you - not too much technique requried.

I remember however we had a new guy turn up saying he was a tighthead prop - he was honestly built like a scrum half. Probably around 5ft 8 and 13 stone dripping wet.

Anyway I got paired with him for a wrestling drill and he had me face in the dirt after about 2s. I have no idea what he was doing but every time I just had no way of answering to it. He did the same against the opposition for a few games for us but then got absolutely mashed against one of the better teams - he said afterwards he had come up against a big guy who also had reasonable technique and physics just won over.

So technique is very important, but more often than not the big guy will still beat the little guy!

RDW wrote:As a poncey back I stayed well clear from the fatboys at training, but especially during pre-season we did a lot of wrestling drills and it was often unavoidable. You'd get the big lads who just used their bulk to smash you - not too much technique requried.

I remember however we had a new guy turn up saying he was a tighthead prop - he was honestly built like a scrum half. Probably around 5ft 8 and 13 stone dripping wet.

Anyway I got paired with him for a wrestling drill and he had me face in the dirt after about 2s. I have no idea what he was doing but every time I just had no way of answering to it. He did the same against the opposition for a few games for us but then got absolutely mashed against one of the better teams - he said afterwards he had come up against a big guy who also had reasonable technique and physics just won over.

So technique is very important, but more often than not the big guy will still beat the little guy!

Coach used to say:
A good wee guy will best a bad big guy 95% of the time

A good big guy will beat a good wee guy 100% of the time

So basically if they are bigger you need to be better. We were neither on Saturday

I missed this game as I have been bedridden these past 2 days with the sick bug , I'm just getting my health back now (just in time to watch us play Denmark in our last world cup qualifying match).

Going by Stuart Hogg (he was fuming according to his tweet), we were good first half but terrible the second.

Anyone fancy giving me a match report :P?

Highland Shaun wrote:I missed this game as I have been bedridden these past 2 days with the sick bug , I'm just getting my health back now (just in time to watch us play Denmark in our last world cup qualifying match).

Going by Stuart Hogg (he was fuming according to his tweet), we were good first half but terrible the second.

Anyone fancy giving me a match report :P?

Get well soon HS.

There's about 4 pages of chat to get through that should give you a very thorough summary!

RDW wrote:

Highland Shaun wrote:I missed this game as I have been bedridden these past 2 days with the sick bug , I'm just getting my health back now (just in time to watch us play Denmark in our last world cup qualifying match).

Going by Stuart Hogg (he was fuming according to his tweet), we were good first half but terrible the second.

Anyone fancy giving me a match report :P?

Get well soon HS.

There's about 4 pages of chat to get through that should give you a very thorough summary!

That result tonight sure cheered me up it's bloody brilliant being Scottish.