The South Africa side that will be playing at Murrayfield on Saturday are stronger than the group that won the World Cup last year, Mike Blair, the Scotland captain, has warned his players. “There is a real threat throughout the team, the back row in particular, and it is going to be a really hard contest,” Blair said.

However, there has also been encouragement for the Scots when they saw the video of the Springboks playing last weekend, with Wales weathering an early storm to fight their way back into the game, and but for giving away an interception try, the Welsh would probably have won.

Blair and his team-mates see themselves as at least level with Wales, so if they can upset South Africa, so can Scotland.

Despite his respect for the opposition, Blair believes that Scotland are capable of springing a surprise, drawing encouragement from his side's performance last weekend in the defeat by New Zealand, insisting that the 32-6 scoreline flattered the opposition. “It is a bitter pill to swallow that we had so much of the game but could not convert it into points,” he said. “In terms of morale this week, it has not been bad because we have tried to focus on the good things.

“We feel that we have done stuff to address the issues, but the acid test will only come when we play the Test match and see if these things will come off - the clinical finishing, the accuracy at the breakdown, the lineout. I hope we will see on Saturday that they have been improved.”

No supporter is more aware than the players that if they are going to win these games they are going to have to start scoring tries, which has been an issue for a succession of Scotland teams since the 1999 Five Nations when their eye for the line took them to the championship title.

Like all the team management, Blair is drawing encouragement from the number of chances that are being created. “In the last Six Nations you could count on one hand the number of chances we created, but we have moved on a level in the number of openings we are creating and now the next job is to finish them off,” Blair said.

South Africa are going to present a radically different style of challenge from the All Blacks, with a much more direct approach, a blitz defence, and a willingness to kick the ball to the other side and challenge them to score from deep in their own half.

“The quality of this South Africa team is exceptional, stronger than the one that won the World Cup last year,” Blair said. “It is a really impressive outfit we are playing against so you forget about the previous performances and look at the quality of the team and what they are capable of doing.”

More impressively still, the new side is starting to create its own set of iconic figures, led by the impressive Beast Mtawarira, the latest product of the Zimbabwean school that once produced Scott Gray, the back row replacement in the Scotland squad.

“I have spoken to the coaches at the school, and they were all saying how good it would be if I was playing for Scotland and he was playing for South Africa, and now it is happening,” Gray said yesterday. “I hope I get on when he is still on the field.”

Gray, whose father is Scottish, might also have qualified for South Africa had he taken up an offer of a place at Stellenbosch University rather than head first for Australia and then the UK to follow his rugby career. “At school we would get beaten regularly when we played schools in South Africa and I found them to be quite arrogant,” he recalled. “I just did not want to go there.”

Gray, like the rest of the Scotland team, has a further motivation to make sure he performs this weekend, with the Scotland A team getting a run out against the full Georgia national side, and including a lot of players who were unlucky to miss out on selection for the senior international team.

Georgia, who came within inches of putting Ireland out of the last World Cup, are ranked a place above Canada, who Scotland play next week, so if the second string can claim their scalp there would be a real pressure for senior places.

Scotland A: R Jackson (Glasgow); N Walker (Ospreys), M Evans (Glasgow), R Dewey (Ulster), M Robertson (Edinburgh); G Ross (Saracens), M McMillan (Glasgow); E Kalman (Glasgow), P Fitzgerald (Toulon), G Cross (Edinburgh), C Hamilton (Edinburgh), A Kellock (Glasgow; capt), R Vernon (Glasgow), K Brown (Glasgow), J Beattie (Glasgow). Replacements: A Kelly (Edinburgh), G Kerr (Edinburgh), D Turner (Glasgow), S Newlands (Edinburgh), C Gregor (Glasgow), A Henderson (Glasgow), S Webster (Edinburgh).