De Villiers keep the faith with his pack

The most talked about sub-plot of this afternoon’s clash between Scotland and Italy was always going to be Stuart Hogg’s switch from full-back to stand-off, and how the home captain will cope with the challenge of being his team’s chief playmaker.

However, an equally fascinating game within the game is set to play out at the pit-face where a new-look home front-five will go up against an Azzurri opposition who will have looked at Scotland’s breakdown and line-out woes last weekend then licked their lips in anticipation.

The Scottish pack have a point to prove today, and if they don’t deliver then Hogg’s selection in the No.10 jersey could very easily become incidental. The pressure is on, but assistant coach Pieter de Villers insisted that there was no need to return to the drawing board this week in order to get things back on track.

“There aren’t any deeprooted issues, the line-out has faired very well since the beginning of the tournament – we were number one in the stats – and it was more of an off day against Ireland,” he stressed. “We lost a bit of rhythm with the France match being postponed, so that was a factor, but we’re not too worried about our systems.

“We’ve worked on the little issues we needed to address this week and we’re confident moving forward.

“As always, we are expecting a really physical encounter,” he added. “They’ve made a few changes to their team which shows that physicality will be important to their team and they will want to do well up front, like they always do against us.”