South Africa are not the defending world champions by accident. After the first 40 minutes Scotland could still glimpse the high road to qualification in Pool B, only to be brought back down to earth with an audible thud. Teams who cannot take all their chances and secure a reliable supply of set-piece ball will be ground down by this Springbok side sooner or later.
If the Boks wobbled at times in the opening 40 minutes it was a very different story after the interval, with two tries inside four minutes from Pieter-Steph du Toit and Kurt-Lee Arendse in the third quarter ultimately keeping the fading Scots at arms length. One long-range Finn Russell penalty was all they could collectively muster against the most formidable defensive side in the tournament.
