A 50-point frolic against the Fiji second team this will not be. Scotland welcome the Springboks, champions of the southern hemisphere, champions of the world, champions of the sort of rugby to make grown men cower, to Edinburgh on Sunday – and they know this is when it gets horribly serious.
It has been faintly amusing, faintly absurd, to watch South Africa’s head coach, Rassie Erasmus, try to mount a charm offensive during the week, all touchy-feely, we-want-to-be-loved one minute, all seven-one-split-on-the-bench, hear-our-roar the next. The Springboks know how to win rugby matches; it seems winning hearts is their next directive.
This should not be quite as hard as they are making out. The old Bomb Squad cliche is very much based on a thing, but South Africa can cut teams to shreds as beautifully as they can bludgeon them to death brutally – and this has been the case for a while. Still, the squad Erasmus has picked for Scotland, even while he protests to the world that he and his boys just want to be loved, suggests they have brutality in mind.
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Scotland respond to the menace of the Springboks by fielding six forwards on their bench, once an outlandish device, now perfectly common in the savage world of international rugby.
It was last year that the Springboks introduced that world to the deliberate (as opposed to emergency) selection of seven forwards on the bench. Indeed, they won a World Cup final with it. Here they roll out the tactic once more, Grant Williams the one back on the bench, one of those lightning scrum-half-cum-winger types.
The world protested long and hard about a seven-one split last year, citing this as the sort of antic that gives rugby – and the Springboks – a bad name. Erasmus, in peddling the conceit again, tells the world back that he does not care. He just wants to be loved.
How Gregor Townsend would love to have to appeal for love. His Scotland team have long been up there with their opponents last weekend, Fiji, as top candidates for the less coveted title of Everyone’s Second Favourite Team. Sometimes they play as if winning people’s hearts is of more concern than winning the match in question. Certainly, they have on occasion contrived to lose in the most heart-breaking manner imaginable.
Townsend will know his work is complete when his side have become less popular, which is best achieved by winning matches – and competitions – with serial regularity. Glasgow have gone some way to achieving this, currently champions of the United Rugby Championship, a status they acquired by winning in South Africa, no less, in the lair of the Bulls.
Seven Glasgow players will start – against four Bulls – but there any comparison will likely end. Glasgow’s win, as popular as any for the above reasons, was achieved in classic ambush style, finishing fourth in the regular season, before riding a wave of form through the playoffs, right up to the final. South Africa, now so familiar with their Celtic confreres in the URC, will need no alerting to Scotland’s threat.
Tom Jordan is given a first start at full-back by Townsend. Certain waspish comments about Scotland’s array of talents not of this nation born have emanated from the Springbok camp, easily missed amid the appeals for love. Jordan is but the latest, a playmaker from New Zealand who has qualified through residency.
His favoured position is fly-half, but Finn Russell returns to the side there from Bath, free to play now the international window is open. Blair Kinghorn, meanwhile, who might have been expected to play at full-back, returns from Toulouse to line up on the wing, replacing Darcy Graham, scorer of four tries against Fiji, who has failed his head injury assessment.
This will be the second rerun of a World Cup pool match, following Wales-Fiji. South Africa terrorised Scotland then. Ominously, they can field so intimidating a lineup featuring just two players from the starting side that day. Franco Mostert returns from a broken leg to partner Eben Etzebeth in the second row.
In a sport with such an array of player types, Etzebeth, captain for the day, could lay claim to being the best in the world. Antoine Dupont might be a more popular choice, certainly more loved, but in the business of winning rugby matches, none are so well versed as Etzebeth, or this Springboks team of which he is the heart and soul. They can work on the love thing when they have retired.
Wales under pressure
The other World Cup rerun on Sunday will take place in Cardiff, where Wales entertain Fiji. Or vice versa. These visitors can do nothing if not put on a show.
Fiji took a bit of a hammering last week in Scotland, but they were not helped by certain decisions against them in the first quarter, during which Scotland racked up a 26-0 lead. But that was without most of their best players. They are bolstered by the inclusion this week of six of those, now released by their clubs for the international window. It means a predominantly inexperienced Wales will have to be on their mettle.
Should they not, they will likely go down to their 10th defeat in a row. One has to go back to that same World Cup pool stage last year for Wales’s most recent win, against Georgia. That was the last of a campaign that yielded four from four, starting with the dramatic win over Fiji on the opening weekend in sweltering Bordeaux. Many thought Fiji, again, more than hard-done-by in that match, but the Wales team they faced then seems to belong to a very different time and place.
Only four of the starting line-up will feature, all of them in the pack. Will Rowlands and Adam Beard form a reassuring presence in the engine room, having missed the summer campaign, which resulted in defeats against South Africa and Australia (twice). Elsewhere, the cap quotient is further boosted by the selection of Tomos Williams and Gareth Anscombe. Their Gloucester teammate, Max Llewellyn is picked in the centre with Ben Thomas, the playmaker of Cardiff, while Blair Murray, a Kiwi with a Welsh mother, is given his debut on the wing.
Confidence is low in the Wales camp, after a winless Six Nations, their first wooden spoon since 2003. A 10th defeat in a row would bode ill for the rest of the series, with Australia and South Africa to come.
