Ali Price stood to be counted in South Africa Test and reveals hopes for Scots contingent next time out

His smart and accurate kicking game – especially in the second half – put the Springboks under serious press, and he controlled the tempo well throughout. It will be a surprise if the Scotsman does not retain the No9 jersey when the team for Saturday’s second Test is named this morning at 10am, with Murray having demonstrated that he is a good man to bring on to close the game out during the final quarter. 

“I was pretty nervous beforehand because it was the biggest game of my career and I wanted to do myself justice by putting in a performance I was proud of,” he reflected yesterday. “I said last week my focus going into the game was trying to execute my basics well. They are the important things going into a Test match, and I felt my basics were pretty good on Saturday. I was delighted to be on the end of a positive result as well.” 

There is an outside chance that Price will end up combining at half-back with his old flatmate and good friend Finn Russell. Head coach Warren Gatland will be keen to retain Dan Biggar in the stand-off slot if he can, but he suffered a concussion in the 67th minute of Saturday’s game and won’t be fit again to train fully until Thursday at the earliest, less than 48 hours before the second Test. There will have been a big conversation during last night’s selection meeting about whether holding out for the Welshman will create too much uncertainty leading up to such an important match. 

If Biggar doesn’t make it then selecting Owen Farrell, who took over at stand-off on Saturday, would be the safe option – but Gatland may decide that being one-nil up in the series affords him the opportunity to go with Russell in an effort to spark the Lions attack, which is one key area he has identified as offering scope for improvement. 

Price says he felt comfortable starting with Biggar as his half-back for the first time ever [they did play 18 minutes together in the pre-tour match against Japan], but admits that he would be delighted to reprise his successful on-field relationship with Russell, which was nurtured during their time together at Glasgow Warriors and bloomed on the international stage with Scotland. 

“Dan’s a quality player and he knows how to play the situations as well, so that helps,” said Price. “We had a week’s training, which is not a great amount of time – you’d like to have more and played a couple of games with each other – but we had a really good understanding of the game-plan and how we wanted to go into it. Dan’s an experienced, world class player. He went out there and did his job, and we can feed off each other.  

“It would be brilliant [if Finn got a chance],” he added. “A lot of people say it but being involved in the Test is the ultimate. Everybody aspires to being picked for it and Finn will be no different. It will be a brilliant occasion for him if he is involved on Saturday and I would be chuffed to bits for him. 

“We can expect the Springboks to improve and put in a better performance this week but then we have plenty of growth in us as well.  There was not much attacking rugby in the game in terms of us getting into our shape and going through the phases. Sometimes games don’t lend themselves to do that, but I think there is room for improvement there.  

“In the first half we gave them momentum and you saw that on the scoreboard, with the way they went from three to six to nine to 12 points, so we could do with tidying up a few things around the breakdown. 

“The positive thing is the way we reacted. Our fitness and our energy throughout the 80 minutes was brilliant and we can build on that. 

“We back our conditioning and how we want to impose ourselves on teams. We speak about the unseen things that don’t require any talent. If you look at some of the kick-chase intensity, for example, we were able to build on that which put us on the front foot and meant we were winning the 50-50 battles and drawing penalties from the South Africans to put a bit of scoreboard pressure back on them. And that got us the win in the end.”