Champions Springboks to face Scotland in 2020 opener

Colin Newboult
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Finn Russell of Scotland and Sbu Nkosi of South Africa go up for a high ball during the Autumn International match at BT Murrayfield, Edinburgh.

World champions South Africa will face Scotland and Georgia in their first games since they lifted the Webb Ellis Cup for the third time.

The newly-crowned Rugby World Cup victors are scheduled to play two Tests against Scotland, on 4 and 11 July, before hosting Georgia in a historic first home Test, on Saturday, 18 July.

It will be the Scots’ first visit to South Africa since June 2014, when the Boks beat them by 55-6 in Port Elizabeth.

Handre Pollard was one of five players who made his Test debut that day and he rounded off a fine performance by kicking five conversions and a penalty goal.

The last time the Boks met Scotland was in November 2018, when the South Africans won 26-20 in Edinburgh, with Pollard again a thorn in the flesh of the Scots, scoring 18 points through a try, two conversions and three penalty goals.

The Springboks and Georgia have only met once before, in a pool match at the Rugby World Cup in 2003 in Sydney, when SA won 46-19, scoring seven tries in the process.

Former Springbok captain and SA Rugby Player of the Year, Schalk Burger, made his Test debut and scored his first try in green and gold on that day at Aussie Stadium.

Meanwhile, Scotland will then face New Zealand in Dunedin on July 18, making it arguably their toughest tour schedule of the modern era.

It will the first time in several years that Scotland have played the leading southern hemisphere sides on their own soil, last facing the Springboks in Port Elizabeth on tour in 2014 and New Zealand in Auckland some 20 years ago.

The news follows confirmation that Scotland will host Argentina, Japan and the All Blacks in the 2020 November Tests at Murrayfield later that year.

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