THE received wisdom is that as an international series wears on, the visiting team will find the heat rising as the home side hone their game to tackle the invading challenge. It is not a view that has been finding a great deal of favour in the Scotland camp as they prepare for the second international against South Africa, to be played in Port Elizabeth today.
They are convinced that now that they have seen, and been shocked by, the way the Springboks play the game, they are in a much stronger position to counter it. While they knew all about the pace and ferocity of the home style on a theoretical level, having studied it extensively on video, nothing really prepares you for the actual experience of facing it.
Once bitten; twice as fired up to smash their own way into the record books. There will be a tactical game plan, but it all hinges on the Scots battering the Springboks with the same brutal efficiency as they experienced in last week’s 36-16 defeat. Subtlety is likely to be in short supply: this is going to be pure testosterone driven, macho head-to-head brutality.
If they could manage it, it would represent one of the most astonishing turnarounds in the history of international rugby. In the first international, Scotland only came into the game when they were four tries down and their opponents were starting to go through their training ground drills. There was a chasm between the sides and the Scots have effectively had only three training sessions to build a bridge.
They have also shuffled their resources. Frank Hadden, the coach, has been unashamedly sizeist in his selection: stick the forwards on the scales and the biggest in each position gets the starting place. On the whole, the bigger players were also the ones who came off the bench last week and restored a certain level of self respect in the second half. Today we will find out if they were lucky to play against tiring opponents or they really should have been there from the start.
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It has been strange week to be around Hadden, desperate at the team announcement to avoid the word “dropped” as he made six changes.
Hard to see it any other way, though for Dan Parks and, in particular, Scott Murray, who were both starters seven days ago and are suited spectators today after being completely removed from the 22. For Parks, he has the comfort of knowing that he lost his place to tactical choice to put an extra forward on the bench; for Murray, there can be no such comfort.
The only reverse of the big-is-best policy comes on the wing, where Hadden insists that Sean Lamont could have played but he did not want to risk the big wing. He also claims that Simon Webster has been the form wing of the past two months, which is an odd way to explain why it was only after Lamont’s injury that he won a starting spot.
Webster himself is not worried, even confessing to having slipped into the changing room last week to try on the No 11 jersey. At that time, it was too big — Lamont’s size — and he had to revert to the No 22 shirt that had already brought a try against the All Blacks and was to bring him another from the bench against the Springboks.
Like all the rest of the understudies, this is his chance to prove that the jersey is his by right. Of the six drafted into the team, five were on the bench last week and only Jon Petrie has been brought in from the outside. A year before the World Cup, a miracle result would make them hard to shift.