● South Africa forwards coach predicts tough match on return to BT Murrayfield

There aren’t too many people who can claim they have cavorted with Scotland boss Gregor Townsend on a hotel bed but Springboks’ forward coach Matthew Proudfoot is one of them. The outsized South African earned four Scotland caps in the early years of the professional era and he shared a room on tour with a much younger version of Scotland’s head coach.

“I always remember the day they slipped the team sheet under the door in the hotel and he (Townsend) opened it, jumped on top of me and gave me a bit of jip.”

Proudfoot has always been a thinking man’s prop forward. He was part of the previous regime and it is testament to his abilities that Rassie Erasmus kept him on when he took the Springbok reins in March.

His grandfather hailed from Ayrshire and, as a youngster, Proudfoot feasted on stories of David Sole’s 1990 Grand Slam success. It was Jim Telfer who originally brought him to play in Scotland and it proved a very different ball game to the one he was used to.

“My eyes were this big,” Proudfoot says, miming two saucer shapes. “The first game I ever played here was at Kilmarnock, and it snowed. I was thinking, ‘what am I doing here?’

“In South Africa everything was up in the air. We carried high, tackled high, scrummed high, mauled high. I came here and Jim Telfer wanted me way down low. I was 20st and I looked at him and said ‘Are you mad?’ He said, ‘Get down there boy’. It took me right out of my comfort zone.”

He would have played at Murrayfield against South Africa but for a neck injury. He thought his chance had gone but eventually made his home debut in a warm-up match ahead of the 2003 World Cup 2 Capped four times for Scotland during the infancy of the professional era, Matt Proudfoot has retained his place as part of the South Africa coaching team since the arrival of Rassie Erasmus earlier this year.