Inexperienced Bok side to face Scotland is no B team, says Stick

The Springboks take on Scotland at Loftus on Saturday with 347 fewer caps than they fielded against England last weekend, but assistant coach Mzwandile Stick insisted this was no B team.

“We always want to build squad depth,” the backline guru said at the captain’s press conference in Johannesburg on Friday afternoon ahead of their second match in the Nations Championship.

“Gone are the days where people will always say, ‘OK this team is the B team’. We don’t have such ...

“When you look at the team sheet it looks like it’s an inexperienced team. But if I look up front, you know, you’ve got a guy like Wilco Louw, probably one of the best tightheads.

“You’ve got a guy like Boan Venter who understands Scotland very well because he was playing there. He knows some of those players. There’s a bit of calculation that we’ve done there with those selections.”

The Springbok starting XV have a combined 445 caps, with 69 sitting on the bench; a week ago those figures stood at 691 and 170, even without captain Siya Kolisi and Eben Etzebeth.

Scotland have 761 caps in their match-day 23.

Stick rated the Scottish side, fresh off an away win over Argentina, as tougher proposition than the English side South Africa beat 54-21 at Ellis Park.

They also finished ahead of England in the Six Nations earlier in the year.

“I think they will be a better team [than England] in the sense of where they are. They are in a good space,” he said.

“Even the games that we’ve played against them before, the game probably in the first 60 minutes, it’s always tight … if you look at the full-time score, it looks like it was just another easy game for us.

“No, we had to make sure that we perform well against them,” he said, adding they know what to expect from their opponents.

“It’s not a secret what they want to do. They’ve got a very skilful backline, and with the mixture of the forwards they’ve got, big loosies, physical, that focus more on getting momentum.”

Stick pointed out that he had worked with their coach, Gregor Townsend, at the Sharks. “He’s someone that enjoys beautiful rugby in a sense of champagne and they call it the dance floor — they like to go to the dance floor in the sense of moving the ball to the wider spaces.”

These laaities have been really working hard, especially in our conditioning camps earlier in June.

—  Mzwandile Stick

He highlighted flyhalf Finn Russell, inside centre Sione Tuipulotu and South Africa-bred wing Kyle Steyn. “He knows our DNA and he’s been doing well for them.”

But again, Stick insisted the South Africans were up to the task.

“It’s a belief that we’ve got in these players. Almost all these players, they’ve performed for their franchise and they deserve to be rewarded … these laaities have been really working hard, especially in our conditioning camps earlier in June.”

Scotland last beat the Springboks in 2010 at Murrayfield, but South Africa have won the last nine consecutive encounters.

The Boks have also won all seven Tests between the two teams in South Africa, though this is the first time they’ll be meeting at Loftus Versfeld.

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