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NELSPRUIT – There are 80 minutes left for the Springboks to fine-tune ahead of the Castle Rugby Championship and coach Heyneke Meyer has much to think about as he considers his options. According to SuperSport’s website, Meyer surprised last week by retaining the core of the team that beat Italy for the second Castle Incoming Tour Series clash against Scotland in Nelspruit. It was against his stated intention of giving as many players as possible a chance to play for the Boks in the first two matches, but in a weird way it worked for him at Mbombela Stadium as the 30-17 win showed him that the shining lights of Kings Park seven days earlier may not have been all they were cracked up to be.

The Boks might have been fortunate to be playing the game at a venue that doesn’t see them often. A performance like the one they delivered in the first half against a side that admittedly played above itself would have been greeted with derision in Durban or Cape Town, but in Nelspruit the atmosphere and support was like they would get against the All Blacks.

The first half, when the Scots fronted the Boks at the gainline and bossed them at the break-downs, was strewn with South African errors, and as a result of that faults were exposed in the play of newcomers such as JJ Engelbrecht, who missed some tackles, and fullback Willie le Roux. Those two dovetailed superbly in scoring a second half try, but overall there was a different perspective from the one gained the week before.

Meyer was talking of Le Roux having more potential to be an impact sub than a starting fullback before Durban and in Nelspruit we could see why he might think that. Patrick Lambie would have started at No 15 in both these past two games had they been against Australia or New Zealand.

So unless Meyer does what he had intimated he was going to do last week by starting him at flyhalf in the series finale in Pretoria on Saturday, don’t be surprised if he or Zane Kirchner take up the last line of defence at Loftus, with Le Roux performing a bench role.

There are lots of areas though that require looking at and need fine-tuning, and Samoa’s easy win over Italy in the first game of this past weekend’s lowveld double header might also bring a different perspective to their opening win. Samoa don’t have the tight phase strength to test the Boks, or at least they shouldn’t have – we have to be careful what we anticipate now because no-one would have expected Scotland to still be in the game until the last move at Mbombela.

Indeed, had it not been for the yellow carding of Scotland lock Jim Hamilton, thus reducing the visitors to 14 men for a critical period of the second half and changing the momentum of the game, the Scots might have inflicted the ultimate embarrassment on the Boks by beating them.

They’ve lost to Scotland in Edinburgh before, but losing in South Africa to a side that is so depleted would have been a severe setback.-Sport24.