Greig Laidlaw will stress the need to maintain discipline as a key factor in his team’s bid to claim a rare victory over South Africa’s Springboks this evening.

The concession of too many penalties was crucial in allowing Wales to build up what proved an unassailable lead a fortnight ago and having been among the exiles who were unavailable for that match, has stressed that there can be no repeat.

“For me, it all comes back to discipline. It’s discipline in everything, not giving away penalties, discipline in training, discipline in the way we hold each other accountable,” said the man who is once again extending his record number of appearances as Scotland captain.

“We’ve really got that now. People know that they need to pull their weight within the team. Not just on match-day, but the whole week in training. They know their roles. We don’t want any muck-ups in training. So, things run smoothly, which gives us confidence heading into the game.

“I think we’ve got that with this group. We can be honest with each other and everybody takes it on the chin.”

Now based in France, where he captains Clermont, the 32-year-old said that would be all the more important with French referee Romain Poite in charge, a week after his compatriots suffered a heart-breaking defeat as they let a 23-9 lead slip against the tourists.

“French referees, a lot of the time, like a contest at the scrum and in mauls. Sometimes, they’ll have a different interpretation of the scrums especially, so it’s important for our forwards to have done their analysis and get up to speed quickly with how he’s reffing that area of the game,” the scrum-half observed.

“It’s vitally important and that comes back to our discipline. We don’t want to be giving away anything cheaply through our forwards or through the scrum.

“He allows a contest, Romain, as long as you’re positive. So, you just need to work with him all the time and make sure you don’t fall on the wrong side of him, or he can tend to stop talking to you. Don’t talk back to the ref. Just get in and give him good pictures in and around the ruck. If we do that, we should be fine.”

As well as doing their homework on the match officials, the Scots have meanwhile paid some attention to last weekend’s match in Paris, looking more closely at the way France generated their lead, than the way the Springboks came back at them to snatch victory five minutes into injury time.

“You can obviously score points against them and that’s very much what we want to do,” said Laidlaw. “Obviously, South Africa done extremely well to come back from that. So, we’ve looked at both aspects, but certainly concentrating on the first one more so in terms of how we can score points.”

As Laidlaw alluded to, their discipline must extend beyond avoiding incurring the displeasure of officials to every element of their play.

From that perspective, the other factor that has to be improved upon, as compared with the trip to Cardiff a fortnight ago, is the maintenance of their defensive structures and concentration on ensuring that full responsibility is taken to put in the necessary tackles.

In that department the most obviously culpable individual was Huw Jones, who missed two vital tackles and, for all that his team-mates have offered their full backing in the interim, indicating that there other factors were at play in terms of drawing him out of position, his inclusion for this encounter with some of the hardest runners in the world game, looking to invite the South Africans to target him.

Laidlaw countered that, however, suggesting that the reverse would be true and that Jones’ time spent playing provincial rugby in the Republic before joining Scotland three years ago will mean he is well respected by the opposition.

“Obviously he was disappointed with how things went in Cardiff, but he’s gone away, had the week off and it’s brilliant for him to come back in after just one week and have the opportunity to show what he can do,” said his captain.

“He knows the South Africans a lot better than most of us, having played out there for the Stormers for two or three seasons. That was maybe part of the thinking in bringing him into the team. He played extremely well for them and they probably hold him in high regard. He just needs to get back on the horse. The players around him will help him. In defence we’ll make sure we shore up the things that happened in Wales.”

Jones will not be alone in being asked physical questions of course, Laidlaw recalling only too well his own last meeting with the Springboks, a bruising encounter at the 2015 World Cup.

“We lost the physical battle that day and that’s probably why we lost the game,” he admitted. “That’s a game I’ve learned from. I think that’s the main point from previous games, we’ve matched them up to a point and then tailed off. We can’t do that this weekend. We need to ramp it up, back our fitness and put pressure on them.”