Taylor relishes predictably tough Springboks test

HAVING made light of the threat posed by Fiji’s flair at the weekend, Scotland know they are preparing this week to confront a much more predictable but much more intimidating opponent in South Africa.

The dimensions of the men facing the home side may be similar, but a different form of physicality will be at play on Saturday and Matt Taylor, Scotland’s defence coach, is setting out to prepare the players accordingly.

“I think you kind of know what’s coming to a certain degree with South Africa and it’s all about being physical and confrontational and stopping them playing,” he said.

“If you do that you’ve got an opportunity to do well and if you don’t you’re going backwards at a rate of knots. We’ll be looking to get up with their line speed and double contact them and do those things.”

For all that the playing styles of the two sides are opposed, he sees a direct comparison in terms of having to cope with headto-head collisions with powerful players at speed.

“The Fijians are excellent, explosive athletes. We did a good job of hitting them close to rucks and mauls and that was a big focus for us,” Taylor observed.

“We all know Leone Nakarawa from his time in Scotland, but he was only able to get away one or two offloads. We double hit him, knocked him back and did a good job of stopping the offloads. That was a key focus.

“We’re going to have to do that again. South Africa tend not to offload so much, they tend to carry hard and straight and square. We will have to be right up for the physical part of the game.

“Going into Saturday’s game we understood what a threat Fiji are and it wasn’t long ago that unfortunately we came on the wrong side of them in Suva and they were probably unlucky not to beat Ireland over in Ireland not that long ago, so we knew it was going to be tough.

“For the majority of the game we did a really good job on them. We didn’t want to give them too much turnover ball.

“The two tries we conceded, one came straight from a turnover and one started from a scrum which we turned over, so it wasn’t great, but in all other facets we were pretty happy..”

The huge advantage, however, is in the psychological aspect of preparing for a type of contact that is only generated when players of those dimensions are playing for real with Jamie Ritchie, one of Scotland’s outstanding performers at the weekend, indicating that it is largely about getting heads around the challenge.

“It’s just a challenge. It’s something a bit different, something you don’t face every week,” said the Edinburgh flanker. “It’s quite different from Fiji and Wales, so it’s another opportunity to test yourself against one of the best sides in the world.

“With the size of the guys they’ve got South Africa will be a test for us all, but hopefully we can front up and that’s something that you’ve just got to get sorted in your own head when it comes to game day.”

‘‘ We’ll be looking to get with their line speed, double contact them