Fiji warning for Scotland - and it's not what you think

Stereotypes can be hard to shake off and the traditional Fijian sevens strengths of broken field running and brilliant offloading were to the fore against the Wallabies who squeezed home 21-18 thanks to captain Harry Wilson's try one minute from time.

But set-piece power is also now a key pillar of Fiji’s game and Scotland will need to be on point in this area this Saturday when the teams meet in Suva.

“I think their physicality and set-piece-wise, they're definitely stronger than what they've been in recent years and they take pride in that and if you give them front foot at scrum time, they'll put you under pressure,” said Pieter de Villiers, the Scotland scrum coach. “They are big, strong men that can travel well out of the blocks in terms of scrum set or speed. If you give them that, you're going to be in for a long afternoon so it's important to start well and have a good process early on to take the scrum game to them.”

De Villiers was largely satisfied with the way Scotland performed in the 29-26 win over the Maori All Blacks in their tour opener in Whangarei on Saturday. The scrum was an important testing ground given the Scots have gone on tour without first-choice props Zander Fagerson and Pierre Schoeman. In their absence, Fin Richardson and Nathan McBeth stepped up.

Scotland have relied heavily on tighthead Fagerson in particular and de Villiers knows it is a position in which they must develop more strength in depth

Maturity and growth

“It's always the issue of game time for props, specifically in terms of their maturity and their growth,” said the former France prop.

“They did well against a strong Maori side who I thought had improved scrum-wise since their game against Japan where they got caught slightly high and slightly slow. They've fixed a couple of things in their scrum and they were stronger against us but I thought we managed that well. And then there was one or two technical bits that we spoke about during the game with the players and fixed up quite well during the game, so that's comforting to see and that's exactly what we need in terms of growing our depth.”

“Only matches will give you that experience. I think training is obviously great but it isn't the same as matches because of the fatigue generated due to general play and other activities on the pitch.”

It was Richardson’s first time playing for Scotland and de Villiers was largely satisfied with the Glasgow Warriors tighthead.

“I thought he came through it very, very well,” said the scrum coach. “We worked on a few things technically and there were a few big scrum weeks training wise and there was a lot of growth session after session. I thought Fin did very well there on the day, yes definitely.”

De Villiers confirmed that Gregor Brown would not be involved in this weekend’s game after sustaining a concussion against the Maori. Scotland will continue to monitor fellow forward Ben Muncaster who suffered a dead leg in Whangarei.