Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend aims to use the lessons of Saturday’s defeat by South Africa to deliver their best autumn performance against Japan.
Townsend’s team threatened to follow up impressive victories over Tonga and Australia by downing the world champions as they led 10-8 at half-time.
Scotland matched the Springboks for tries thanks to Stuart Hogg’s double, which took the captain to joint top of the all-time try-scorers list for his country with 24.
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It’s time to take a look behind-the-scenes at another busy day at @BTMurrayfield yesterday.
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— Scottish Rugby (@Scotlandteam) November 14, 2021
But a 15-9 penalty count told for the visitors, who kicked themselves out of sight in the final quarter to win 30-15.
Scotland round off the Autumn Nations Series next Saturday against Japan, who suffered a 60-5 defeat against Ireland earlier this month.
“Japan will be a tough opponent,” Townsend said. “We won’t look too much at their result against Ireland.
“So that will be a very tough game for us and it will show the resilience of the group if we can bounce back after a painful defeat and put what we learned on Saturday and what we have learned over the last few weeks into our best performance of this Autumn Nations Series.
“That’s all we are working towards. We thought we would get it out on Saturday and we would have needed our very best performance to beat the world champions.
“Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. We will work again to do that next weekend.”
