{"id":35522,"date":"2015-10-02T14:22:10","date_gmt":"2015-10-02T12:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mobserver.co.za\/35522\/time-to-crush-some-scottish-flowers\/"},"modified":"2015-10-02T14:22:10","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T12:22:10","slug":"time-to-crush-some-scottish-flowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/sports-news\/rugby-world-cup\/2015\/10\/02\/time-to-crush-some-scottish-flowers\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to crush some Scottish flowers"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6>David Rush, South Coast Herald<\/h6>\n<p>The one is that the Scots are actually playing some pretty good rugby and could win.<\/p>\n<p>The second is that the Boks are still smarting after the loss to these Japanese, despite the subsequent win over Samoa.<\/p>\n<p>And so will be a furious mood, taking no passengers and showing no mercy whatsoever, crushing any Scottish resistance into the turf.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s hope it&#8217;s the latter.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of the team selection, there are changes, some forced, some not.<\/p>\n<p>Captain Jean de Villiers&#8217;s injury means that Jesse Kriel comes in at 13. News is that De Villiers&#8217;s operation went well.<\/p>\n<p>So the backline is: 9 Fourie du Preez, 10 Handr\u00e9 Pollard, 11 Bryan Habana, 12 Damian de Allende, 13 Jesse Kriel, 14 JP Pietersen, 15 Willie le Roux.<\/p>\n<p>This looks solid. The bench will include Ruan Pienaar, Pat Lambie and Jan Serfontein, who has been flown in to replace De Villiers.<\/p>\n<p>The scrum has a very powerful look, with Lood de Jager back in the starting line-up due to an injury to Victor Matfield,<\/p>\n<p>Bismarck du Plessis is back at hooker, with Adriaan Strauss on the bench. This is disappointing as it seemed Strauss added calm leadership against Samoa, and Schalk Brits added some &#8216;zing&#8217; off the bench.<\/p>\n<p>So the scrum is: 1 Tendai Mtawariria, 2 Bismarck du Plessis, 3 Jannnie du Plessis, 4 Eben Etzebeth, 5 Lood de Jager, 6 Francois Louw, 7 Schalk Burger, 8 Duane Vermeulen.<\/p>\n<p>Bench is Trevor Nyakane, Adriaan Strauss, Frans Malherbe, Pieter-Steph du Toit and Willem Alberts.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a bit unlucky for Siya Kolisi, but Du Toit and Alberts should add some serious power in the last 20 minutes or so.<\/p>\n<p>Much has been said about the captaincy, which has gone to Fourie du Preez for this game. Schalk Burger is the vice-captain.<\/p>\n<p>It should be a cracking encounter. Stock up on biltong and enjoy.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Congratulations to Fourie du Preez, who will become <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/hashtag\/Springboks?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Springboks<\/a> captain #56 when he leads team against <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Scotlandteam?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Scotlandteam<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/BTLAfLnoYS\">pic.twitter.com\/BTLAfLnoYS<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Springboks (@Springboks) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Springboks\/status\/649252514542546944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 30, 2015<\/a><\/blockquote>\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THERE are two schools of thought whose opinions are being bandied about ahead of the Springboks clash against Scotland at 5.45pm this Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5696,"featured_media":35523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2771,2886],"tags":[2832,887,2708,2776,2774,1954],"class_list":["post-35522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby-world-cup","category-sports-news","tag-fourie-du-preez","tag-rugby","tag-rugby-world-cup","tag-rwc","tag-scotland","tag-springboks"],"category_labels":{"Category":"Sport","SubCategory":"Rugby World Cup"},"tag_labels":["fourie du preez","rugby","Rugby World Cup","RWC","scotland","springboks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5696"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}