THERE was at least one satisfied Scotsman at St James' Park on Saturday. Richie Gray, not the current giant Scotland lock forward but the former SRU youth coach and native of Galashiels with the same name who now earns his crust with a role on the Springboks coaching staff as breakdown consultant, was unsurprisingly enthused about the muscular manner in which his charges had performed during their 34-16 win. While he was at pains to point out that it will all count for nothing unless the Group B leaders can finish the job against the USA on Wednesday, just perhaps Gray will have his perfect outcome, and both the country of his birth and his adopted nation will progress to the quarter finals.
"I think Scotland are not far away from being a very good team," said Gray. "It's been building for the last three years, not just the past six or eight weeks. They've got a strong core of players, that group from Glasgow who are used to winning. "I worked with guys like Stuart Hogg, Ross Ford, Richie Vernon, Greig Laidlaw, they all came through the Borders academy and it's great to see them on an international level, compete and be dangerous players. A lot will come down to how they avoid injuries but I think they have a team there that can do a lot of damage. They're very dangerous to play, put on a lot of width, with good steppers, good basic skills and passers. They're a difficult side to play.
"After Samoa losing to Japan that's their World Cup over," he added. "So it's really about how they motivate themselves this week now. It's down to Scotland to go and win that. Samoa will still be physical and Scotland will have to count the knocks they've picked up in a bruising encounter here. But you would back Scotland to go through, and hopefully we will too."
As for South Africa, they appear to be picking up momentum nicely after the trauma of that opening defeat to Japan in Brighton. "Listen, the Japan game was such a disaster for us that there has been a completely different animal going out on the field now and every game is a final," said Gray. "Even this game [against Scotland] means nothing now because we've got to beat the USA on Wednesday. We put ourselves in that position and we'll get ourselves out of it. I just felt that on Saturday it was another step up from Samoa. It was a closely contested game, very physical, but I thought our group just brought it."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here