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Gregor Townsend felt Scotland produced one of their best performances of recent years as they threatened an upset against world champions South Africa before succumbing to a 32-15 defeat at Murrayfield.
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The Scots were 19-9 down at the break following two tries from Makazole Mapimpi and one from Thomas du Toit after Scott Cummings was shown a 20-minute red card for a dangerous clear-out of a ruck.
But they rallied impressively after the break and got back to within four points at a time when the Boks were down to 14 men following a yellow card for Mapimpi just before the hour.
Scotland’s failure to add a try to Finn Russell’s five penalties proved costly, however, as South Africa pulled away in the closing stages, with a late try from Jasper Wiese putting gloss on the scoreline.
“I thought it was one of our best performances of the last few seasons,” said Townsend, who felt Cummings’ red was “very harsh”.
“A performance like that, to go up against the world champions, you’ve got to bring your own physicality and match their physicality.
“You’ve got to work as hard as you’ve ever worked and I felt our players did that. When you consider that we were down a man for 20 minutes, and that player being a second row, it takes a huge effort to get through that. And the effort was there in the second half.
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“When the game was opening up, we looked at times the fitter team and it looked like we were sharper. So there’s a huge amount of pride, not just pride, but pleasing aspects of the performance.
“There was some skill execution that we have to improve, but I also felt we had a bit of bad luck. We stole a lineout in our 22 and the ball bobbles into their hands (for Du Toit) and they score seven points when they hadn’t had much pressure.
“The question about not scoring tries, that’s a valid one, but I felt we had enough pressure and positions to score more points so we’ll look at how we can improve that.”
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Captain Sione Tuipulotu felt there was a “vibe” about Scotland’s play in the second half as they threatened to get their noses in front going into the final quarter.
“We put ourselves in positions to score tries,” he said. “I thought the last bit of execution really let us down, especially in the finish zone, close to the line.
“We were down there for a big part of that second half and we didn’t walk away with tries that we should have, so we’ve got to take responsibility for that. The game was there to be won and we didn’t execute.”
South Africa defeated Scotland 18-3 at the World Cup in Marseille 14 months ago and their head coach Rassie Erasmus was pleased to restrict them to no tries once more, even though he conceded his side were fortunate to win by 17 points.
“I know the scoreboard maybe doesn’t tell the whole story,” he said.
“But probably we can be very proud of playing against Finn Russell in two games and not giving a try away. I think that’s really hard to do, but it’s certainly not a performance we’re very proud of.”
In this episode of Walk the Talk, Jim Hamilton chats with double World Cup winner Damian de Allende about all things Springbok rugby, including RWC2023 and the upcoming Ireland series. Watch now for free on RugbyPass TV
These guys should lay off the herbs.
This is exactly the wrong mindset. This is why Scotland will never be a top team.
So, they get routed on the scoreboard in a game, where they had stretches of being better than the opposition, and the head-coach is upbeat?
Make it make sense. He should be livid. He can be upbeat about details after getting swept in a match, where they didn’t stand a chance. But to claim, that they stood a chance in a match, that they lost by seventeen points, and even be upbeat about that. Talking about a culture of mediocrity, SMH.
England, for all their faults are deeply dissatisfied after losing narrowly in a match where they realistically stood a chance to win. Not a fan of England, but that’s precisely the right mindset to have. Only a mindset, where a team is grossly dissatisfied with a narrow loss, and perceives that as a problem to solve, can lead to consistent progress.
And I’m not even going to delve into what an act of delusional self-flattery it is of him to think they could have won an international test match where they were getting monstered at scrum, and scored zero tries to four. That’s a debate in and of itself.
Zero chance, Gregor. You had precisely zero chance of winning this match.
Scotland is a very good team. He is upbeat because it's the best Scotland played in many years. It just happened to be against a Bok side that knows how to pull through and win. These Boks is finishers. Rusty or not. He should be angry at his players. There was moments earlier on, that if they took their chances, the game could have gone either way. Being proud going 60 min toe to toe against the Boks is the problem.
To win against them, they need to push the full 80 min. Despite the winning margin, Rassie could barely hide his irritation after the game with the way the Boks performed. He was not a happy coach. Not often you see a losing coach happy and the victorious coach unhappy. Strange phenomenon that.
Others would say that SA are arrogant because we are not happy with the win, but the truth is that we know what they are capable of, and that was sub par. Not good enough. Too many mistakes, ill discipline, handling errors, and I won't even talk about those line outs. A disgrace.
If any other team played against the Scots, they would have lost. That was a great game from them.
Unfortunately the same can't be said of the Boks. Flashes of brilliance but too many mistakes and frankly they looked rusty and incohesive as a team.
Really missed Ruan Nortje in the line outs. What a mess. Breakdowns were poor. Too many steals. Knock ons galore. Discipline went awry. 11 penalties is too much. I don't usually bash refs, but this was a very poor performance from him. Against both teams.
Very unsatisfactory win. Lots of work to do ahead of England, although we will most likely see around 10-12 changes. Andre Esterhuizen was a monster truck, bashing away, Handre and Willie had very good games and those kick were pin point accurate.
There is many positives too. Playing this badly against a team that really excelled, and still coming away with the win is phenomenal.
That scoreline flatters the Boks. This felt like a game with 1 point in it to the end, despite the big margin. A win we will happily take, but there is nothing to get complacent about. It was an overall poor performance the Boks.
Didn't think much of Pollard's kicking - Libbok would have done just as well, but of course I'm not allowed to say that. He might even have set up a few tries with his running, but I suppose I can't say that, either.
If any other team?
Boks have not played for a while and this particular team's not played as a unit at all. It was always going to be scrappy but the Boks showed their class by not conceding a try and scoring four of their own. If you can be this sloppy and still beat a really good Scotland side by 17 points you are doing something right. As is always Rassie's way this was another gamble and it paid off. While most other teams are picking roughly the same line-ups game in and game out, the Boks are building their depth with each match.
So the Boks played poorly and the Scots played well and SA still scored four tries to zip on the way to a 17-point victory. Sorry, but the gap between the two teams seems rather large.