A 50-point frolic against the Fiji second team this will not be. Scotland welcome the Springboks, champions of the southern hemisphere, champions of the world, champions of the sort of rugby to make grown men cower, to Edinburgh on Sunday – and they know this is when it gets horribly serious.
It has been faintly amusing, faintly absurd, to watch South Africa’s head coach, Rassie Erasmus, try to mount a charm offensive during the week, all touchy-feely, we-want-to-be-loved one minute, all seven-one-split-on-the-bench, hear-our-roar the next. The Springboks know how to win rugby matches; it seems winning hearts is their next directive.
Rassie Erasmus: ‘Springboks aren’t the bad guys – but it’s always personal’
This should not be quite as hard as they are making out. The old Bomb Squad cliche is very much based on a thing, but South Africa can cut teams to shreds as beautifully as they can bludgeon them to death brutally – and this has been the case for a while. Still, the squad Erasmus has picked for Scotland, even while he protests to the world that he and his boys just want to be loved, suggests they have brutality in mind.
Scotland respond to the menace of the Springboks by fielding six forwards on their bench, once an outlandish device, now perfectly common in the savage world of international rugby.
It was last year that the Springboks introduced that world to the deliberate (as opposed to emergency) selection of seven forwards on the bench. Indeed, they won a World Cup final with it. Here they roll out the tactic once more, Grant Williams the one back on the bench, one of those lightning scrum-half-cum-winger types.
The world protested long and hard about a seven-one split last year, citing this as the sort of antic that gives rugby – and the Springboks – a bad name. Erasmus, in peddling the conceit again, tells the world back that he does not care. He just wants to be loved.