South African coach Nick Mallett's candour in assessing his team's performance in victory against Scotland at Murrayfield will send a shiver through those Five Nations wannabes in relation to the World Cup. "I don't think today that we would have been good enough to beat Australia or New Zealand. I would like to include England in that. I was very impressed with their performance against Italy.

"We have got to improve by another 20 per cent. We do have the ability to score tries from broken play but our ball control was something with which I was not happy. We made crucial errors in attack in the first half and the Scots capitalised. It was very important for us to score after the break. Once the game opened up and the Scottish tight five tired Bobby (Skinstad), Pieter (Roussouw) and Joost found the spaces."

Captain Joost van der Westhuizen conceded that he felt nothing more than "relief" following the victory. "The Scots capitalised on our mistakes in the first half but our game breakers came through for us."

One could sense the feeling of disappointment among the Scottish contingent before they articulated their feelings. Captain Gary Armstrong conceded: "We let it slip after half-time. We made too many mistakes and the players are disappointed at that."

Coach Jim Telfer elaborated: "We did not adhere to the gameplan which we decided at half-time. We were going to look to Gregor for more kicking off the front foot. Their back three was vulnerable to the ball in behind them.

"Instead we got ourselves into positions where we had to hoist up-and-unders and chase the ball. Our first-up tackles then were simply not good enough. I thought we scrummaged superbly and George Graham deserves a lot of credit for that but our line-out was very disappointing. We should have shortened it to five more often, making it easier to win the ball."