Battling with Fiji’s big men has given Scotland a taste of what is to come next weekend according to their head coach Gregor Townsend, but he knows that the Springbok challenge will be much more sustained and coordinated.
Individually the South Sea Islanders are among the most destructive in world rugby, but they struggle to get the preparation time required to build the systems and structures required to be competitive in the Test arena, unlike the two-time world champion Springboks.
“You know what’s coming from South Africa,” said Townsend.
“They’ll put huge pressure on your scrum, excellent lineout defence, and a huge lineout drive. What they do in open play, there’s more nuances to it but the fundamental is them coming round the corner and running hard. They’ve done that since they were teenagers, it’s the way they play in South Africa, and they have the biggest men in world rugby.
“This was a good test in some ways, there was some huge men in the Fijian team and we put in some really good tackles, double tackles that knocked the Fijians back. We just have to do that time and again next week.”
The benefit of time spent together was evident in the way Scotland took control of Saturday’s match, the Fijians struggling to cope with their well organised lineout drives, but, pleased as he was with that department, Townsend knows it will be different against the leading teams.
“If you score tries from them, they’re great, but the number of tries scored from them has gone down recently. A few years ago there were a lot more scored from driven line outs,” he said.
“Teams are much better at defending them, so it’s great we’ve scored from them. We scored one last week, Jonny Gray was an inch short of a second and we got a couple or more today. Our hookers seem to be our leading try scorers because of it, although the wingers are maybe back in front now!
“We know that, against certain teams, it’s going to be very difficult. South Africa’s lineout drive defence is outstanding, but it’s a way to manipulate a defence. If they believe you’re going to drive from the lineout, maybe they will narrow up, they won’t go up in the lineout. That allows you to potentially move the ball wide.”
After having two tries disallowed after replays were checked in Wales the previous week, Townsend meanwhile called on the sport’s authorities to bring about more consistency in the way technology is used after Scotland were denied two more on Saturday.
“The TMOs (television match officials) are now encouraged to let the referees make the decision – unless it’s something that the referees have clearly got wrong. If the referees are there and have seen it, it’s got to be their decision, so to come in on two tries… one of them was allowed, the other I can’t believe was disallowed.”
The bigger concern, however, has to be over any failure to properly protect players and Townsend felt there had been an example of that.
“TMOs have a big role to play now with foul play. Because the game is so fast that you don’t always see if a tackle is high or not.
‘I thought Finn (Ruseell) was tackled high and we need to protect our players from that.”
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