Following South Africa’s victory over Scotland in their Test match in Edinburgh over the weekend, former Springbok Schalk Brits has sung the praises of the side ahead of the next match of their November tour.

That next clash, of course, is against old foes England at Twickenham in London on Saturday.

The Springboks held a slender lead at 19-15 up heading into the last quarter of the clash against Scotland, before a couple late scores sealed the contest with the visitors running out 32-15 winners.

South Africa scored four tries, while Scotland could only manage five penalties as they were unable to breach the Springbok tryline.

‘It wasn’t inevitable’

Speaking to Genting Casino in an exclusive interview, Brits said: “Scotland are a very good side so it wasn’t inevitable. To go to Murrayfield and think it is going to be a walkover with Finn Russell pulling the strings is very dangerous. From an attacking perspective they ask a lot of questions.

“It is hard to win any game when you can't dominate the set-phase. Yes, they've disrupted the lineouts, but to give so many penalties away at scrum time, is very hard to play against.”

With a number of first-choice players rested or playing off the bench, like regular skipper Siya Kolisi, Brits said Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus had incredible depth at his disposal.

“He has used about 45 players from the start of the season,” said Brits.

“What other team has used that vast amount of players? He is creating depth and experience within the squad.

“Rassie's viewpoint is judging it over an extended period looking at the trends in rugby? What is the next big thing? How and where can we evolve?”

Brits went on to say that Erasmus had completely changed the approach of Springbok rugby.

“From that perspective, if I look at other cultures, we weren't there before Rassie took over. We looked at Australia, we looked at England, we looked at New Zealand. What were they doing? I think if you look at Rassi now, he's evolving selection policies, transforming the way he sees the game, playing a different way and bringing in experts from outside of the South African environment like Tony Brown.

“That is the one place where we need to evolve, the attack. We score some beautiful tries but structurally having a better attacking side is the next dimension.”

With the England match this weekend, before the clash against Wales in just under two weeks - Brits said it would always be a highly charged match at Twickenham.

“As a South African, you want to play England, Ireland and France so we're going to have a very exciting match this weekend against England.”

@Golfhackno1

IOL Sport