Forwards coach John Dalziel has challenged Scotland not to let physical South Africa “kill” their natural flair game in what he expects to be a style war in Sunday’s World Cup showdown in Marseille.
The Scots have become one of the most swashbuckling, fast-paced attacking teams on the planet while the Springboks are renowned for their power game.Dalziel insists the Scots are intent on ensuring their opponents do not squeeze the life out of them at Stade Velodrome.
“We’ve got to meet them on the gain line defensively, and we’ve also got to express our attacking game on them, we’ve got to be able bring the speed we want to play at – the speed we have become famous for – into this match,” he said at a press conference in Nice on Wednesday afternoon.
“Tactically, it’s one against the other. They’re going to slow us down and kill us on the floor and we’re going to look to keep the pace high, and whoever comes out on the best side of that is going to go a long way to winning the game.”
Dalziel has been busy trying to plot the downfall of the on-form Boks, and he believes Scotland – ranked fifth in the world – are now operating at a level where they genuinely fancy their chances of pulling off a victory.
“It is very challenging, very daunting, but it is something we’ve had our mind on for a long time and we have been building towards that,” he said.
“We believe we’ve moved away from being a Scotland team who goes to event with hope, to having genuine belief.
We believe we have a strong squad but we don’t believe we are anywhere near our potential yet— John Dalziel
“We believe we have a strong squad but we don’t believe we are anywhere near our potential yet.
“We believe there is huge growth in this young squad, and we’re taking a lot of learning from game to game, which means every game we have we are getting better.
“We believe that everything is ahead of this group, and we genuinely believe we can exit this group (which also contains world number one Ireland, Tonga and Romania) and progress through in this World Cup.
“The Scottish psyche, we like being underdogs. We worry sometimes when we become favourites.
“But I don’t think the players worry about it too much either way – they prepare very well and they know they have the game.
“It is just about being able to spin all the plates at once in total team performance, and I think this is what it is going to take in the pool we’re in – four consistent, high-level performances.”
