LOFTUS PREVIEW: Boks must prevent fast start from Russell boosted Scots

The South Africans who were on the Scotland side when they upset England and France in the Guinness Six Nations will know what the Springboks should be wary of when everyone’s second favourite team becomes opposition in the second round Nations Championship game at Loftus.

Given the cockiness of England before the kick-off to the Six Nations, with their coach throwing ahead to the final game in Paris as a final frontier for a Grand Slam bid, many Bok supporters were delighted when Steve Borthwick’s team came a cropper at Murrayfield. And only just slightly less so when they produced the shock of the competition by putting 50 points past France.

In the England game the Scots took the game by the scruff by scoring early tries through Huw Jones and Jamie Ritchie in the 10th and 14th minutes respectively. Forced to play catch-up, England didn’t have the composure to make up the leeway and lost 31-20, a late consolation try from the losers slightly flattering them.

It was a second half flurry that set the Scots on the road to such a huge score against France, but the tone for the game was set, and the Scottish confidence built, in the early minutes, with Darcy Graham scoring after just six minutes. Although France did fight back with two tries of their own, it was Scotland who had the edge and momentum at halftime.

They will be looking to do something similar at Loftus, and against a Bok team starting with their strongest pack in terms of physical presence and first phase ability, meaning that they may be less mobile than they will when the likes of Ntuthuko Mchunu and Zachary Porthen come on, it is easy to identify what the Scots will be targeting.

VISITORS WILL LOOK TO GET SA AWAY FROM THEIR STRENGTHS

They will be looking to take the Boks away from their strengths and impose their own strength, which is a wide game built around quick ruck ball, on proceedings. In a nutshell, pretty much what the All Blacks, judging from their performance in their first outing under new coach Dave Rennie against France last week, will be aiming to do when they come here next month for the Greatest Rivalry Tour and Series.

In that sense the Scots are the perfect team for the Boks to warm up for the main event against. And coach Rassie Erasmus won’t mind the gamble either. If it is indeed a gamble. Yes, there are 10 changes, but it is an illustration of the depth the Boks have available to them that it is hard to really identify an area where the Scots might have a better combination for this game.

More experience perhaps, and certainly from scrumhalf to inside centre, now that Finn Russell is back in the Scottish mix after returning from an injury layoff, they have world class players who can pose a lot of problems for the Boks if they are allowed to put it together. Sione Tuipulotu is a fine player at inside centre. Ditto the South African born wing Kyle Steyn out wide. We’ve seen him hurt many a team and he has scored some spectacular tries for his adopted country.

But then so do the Boks have world class players in those positions. Flyhalf Handre Pollard may not have been in good form for the Bulls in the Vodacom URC season, but he is a double World Cup winner. No Scottish player has won any World Cups. The Scots will also be well aware of the star quality that Embrose Papier can bring as he was the URC’s best player in 2025/2026 and Damian Willemse is quite simply brilliant in whatever position he plays.

Okay, the idea of Willemse in the No 12 rather than the No 15 doesn’t generate quite the level of excitement that it did when Erasmus switched him there for the Wellington game against the All Blacks when Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Manie Libbok were the flyhalves.

That made for a sublime attacking dynamic in the 10/12 axis which doesn’t quite amount to the same mix with Pollard/Willemse, but then that might not be what the Boks are looking for in this game anyway.

WILCO AND CO DOMINATED GLASGOW IN LAST HOUR OF URC SEMI

For you don’t have to have a particularly sharp memory to recall that several Bulls players who are fronting in the Boks pack were part of the Bulls tight five that effectively turned the URC semifinal against Glasgow Warriors at Murrayfield after the 20th minute. The Bulls were hugely dominant at forward after they’d recovered from the early Glasgow blitz, and the Glasgow pack - okay the Scotland pack is stronger than Glasgow’s - was easily dispatched by the Stormers’ eight when those two sides met on grass in Cape Town in a league game won 46-12 by the hosts.

“On grass” is the operative phrase when referencing a South African team against Glasgow. Yes, there was that great comeback and epic win for Glasgow in the 2024 URC final in June 2024 and they also comfortably beat the Stormers in the heat of Stellenbosch in October 2024. But they were beaten by the Sharks the week before that Stormers game and have generally tended to come second on South African soil.

SLOW POISON MAY MEAN FAST START ACTUALLY BACKFIRES

Which has been the way with Scotland generally. They’ve threatened the Boks at times, and they may do so again on Saturday. But Scotland have never won in South Africa, with seven losses in seven starts, and the Boks outscoring them more than two to one when it comes to points.

They may trouble the Boks for a while, and Rassie may even welcome that. He’s testing the players who will take the field, and there is no proper test without attrition. But the Boks should win, and according to the trend of Bok games in this era, it is usually the case that the Boks, like last week, are the only team on the field at the finish. In that sense, the Scottish intention to start with an up tempo game may just backfire on them. Sensible game management is needed in the rarified highveld air. Just ask the Boks after what happened to them against Australia in Johannesburg last August.

Teams:

SOUTH AFRICA: Aphelele Fassi; Edwill van de Merwe, Jesse Kriel, Damian Willemse, Canan Moodie; Handre Pollard, Embrose Papier; Evan Roos, Pieter-Steph du Toit (captain), Paul de Villiers, Ruan Nortje, Cobus Wiese, Wilco Louw, Johan Grobbelaar, Boan Venter.

Replacements: Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Ntuthuko Mchunu, Zach Porthen, Ben-Jason Dixon, Vincent Tshituka, Elrigh Louw, Grant Williams, Quan Horn.

SCOTLAND: Kyle Rowe, Kyle Steyn, Rory Hutchinson, Sione Tuipulotu (captain), Jamie Dobie, Finn Russell, Ben White, Jack Dempsey, Rory Darge, Matt Fagerson, Scott Cummings, Gregor Brown, Zander Fagerson, Ewan Ashman, Pierre Schoeman.

Replacements: Gregor Hiddleston, Rory Sutherland, Will Hurd, Alex Samuel, Josh Bayliss, Magnus Bradbury, Tom Jordan, Stafford MacDowall.

Referee: Pierre Brousset (France).

Kick-off: 17.40

Prediction: Boks to win by between 15 and 20