SCOTLAND v SOUTH AFRICA: SOUTH AFRICA captain John Smit admits the loss of Fourie du Preez to injury less than 48 hours before today's clash with Scotland was a major blow to his team.

But Smit insists the world champions have enough strength in depth to overcome the absence of their influential scrumhalf.

Ricky Januarie will replace Du Preez at number nine after the latter hurt a quadriceps muscle in training on Thursday.

"When you lose the best scrum-half in the world it's certainly going to affect your game, but it's not a train smash," Smit said.

"We're lucky we've got Ricky, who has 30 or 40 caps as well, so he understands the game.

"He's probably got other strengths as well. He's probably more the guy that will snipe round the edges.

"Ruan (Pienaar, the outhalf) might have to take a bit more pressure from the kicking point of view, but Ricky will take pressure off.

"It's not ideal. We wanted to draw strength from having the same 22 players two weeks in a row - we wanted to improve with the same 22 from the week before."

Smit revealed the Springboks are desperate to kick-start their European tour with an improved performance at Murrayfield after a lacklustre showing against Wales last weekend.

"The only momentum we got out of last week was the result, so we want some kind of momentum to take to London," he said.

Replacements

SCOTLAND: 16 Dougie Hall, 17 Alasdair Dickinson, 18 Matt Mustchin, 19 Scott Gray, 20 Rory Lawson, 21 Dan Parks, 22 Hugo Southwell.

SOUTH AFRICA: 16 Brian Mujati, 17 Gurthro Steenkamp, 18 Andries Bekker, 19 Ryan Kankowski, 20 Danie Rossouw, 21 Frans Steyn, 22 Jaque Fourie.

Referee: Dave Pearson (England).