Scotland Humbled by South Africa, Does Scotland Have a Long way to go?

Despite comfortably beating Tonga, and coming out on top narrowly beating Australia in a climactic battle, world champions South Africa took on Scotland at Murrayfield and took advantage of penalties and conversions to humble the Scottish team 30 to 15.

World no1 South Africa were too much for the Scots

With a try from South Africa by Makazole Mapimpi to start things off, Scotland fired back with a try of their own from captain Stuart Hogg and a few conversions to bring it 10 to 8 in Scotland’s favour.

However, the second half saw Scotland tire and despite countering another try from South Africa’s Makazole Mapimpi with one of their own again from Stuart Hogg, the Scotland side failed to take advantage of the penalties and conversion opportunity that were presented to them.

South Africa on the other hand was not as willing to waste their opportunities, as Handre Pollard and Frans Steyn came off the bench to convert the conversion from the try and the clumsy penalties that Scotland provided them.

Stuart Hogg the Scotland captain said: "We challenged ourselves to come out in the second half and make the most of it, unfortunately we were second best at times. We've almost shot ourselves in the foot there, and it hurts.”

Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend said: "The defeat will stick for a while because we didn't put our best performance out there and we felt our best performance would give us a win, so it'll hurt for a few days.”

Stuart Hogg was also praised by the Scotland manager for making his 87th appearance for Scotland: "I think becoming the most capped full-back in world rugby history is the main achievement and is outstanding, it shows what a great player Stuart has been consistently.

“ And to equal the try-scoring record... we're all pretty confident he'll break the record in the next few games or few years because he has a lot of years left in him.

He's been a brilliant captain for us in the last two seasons and he showed his quality again today."

With the defeat by the World Champions in the rear mirror, Scotland are gearing up to face Japan next week at Murrayfield. But with this defeat by South Africa and the defeat by Japan in the 2019 world cup to avenge, are Scotland ready and do they have a long way to go before the six nations competition starting February?

Written by Ian Bonar