With the countdown running towards their World Cup meeting with the Springboks, one of Scotland's senior players last night admitted that they have gone backwards instead of forwards in the last five months.

Many involved in Scottish rugby having expressed surprising levels of excitement when the team were beaten 30-17 in Nelspruit in June, Al Strokosch, the team's hard-hitting and straight-talking flanker, accepted that little encouragement could be drawn from yesterday's 28-0 home defeat by South Africa.

"We were well aware of what it takes to win at this level. Clearly we did not have it and they did. I felt it was a job unfinished from when we played them in June, but we have taken a step back," he said with characteristic bluntness.

Perversely the Scots maintained that they felt their defence had coped well in spite of conceding four tries which, under tournament conditions, would have allowed South Africa to maximise their points haul from the encounter. However, in saying so, Strokosch accepted that problems elsewhere meant it was constantly being examined.

"It was 28-0 but the strange thing is that we never felt under pressure in defence. We will need to do something about our ball retention in attack, though," said Strokosch. "Greig [Laidlaw] was having a horrible time trying to get the ball out of the ruck and that showed.

"We were second best at the breakdown and will have to take responsibility for that and do some heavy work this week. We have good players in that area of the game but the good players did not turn up for us in this game."

Scotland's head coach took a similar view of the team's efforts given how much time they spent on the retreat as he looked for positives to draw from a potentially demoralising encounter. "I thought the defence held," said Scott Johnson. "It was resolute, if you like. It's a funny thing to say when you've conceded four tries, but with the amount of possession they had, that game could have gone down a further path if you like.

"So I thought there was great resolve in defence, so it just goes to show that when we get our stuff right and starve them of a bit of possession, yes they scored early, but they didn't threaten after that because we got our part right. So it just goes to show that most of our issues are ours and ours alone.

"There were a couple of issues which put us under pressure at the start of the game, but that's the negative side. It put us under a heap of, heap of pressure on the back of which they scored points, we accept that but sometimes as a coach you have to look at how people bounce back. We won 11 on the bounce.

"It was an unusual day for that, so we showed composure under pressure in that area. We got ourselves out of the jam and started to have a look. This ride, this journey is about finding out about people. We found out a bit about a few today."