Scotland forwards coach John Dalziel has warned that Gregor Townsend’s men can’t afford to take Fiji lightly despite their thrashing at the hands of England last weekend.
The Scots round off their summer Nations Championship commitments following matches away in Argentina and South Africa by taking on the Pacific Islanders at Murrayfield on Saturday.
Fiji are ‘hosting’ all their matches in this series in the UK and were beaten 39-24 by Wales before being hammered 73-8 by England in Liverpool on Saturday.
Scotland will be expected to add to their pain with a comfortable victory but Dalziel believes they need to be wary of a backlash from a side that ran out 29-14 victors when the teams last met in Suva last summer.
Dalziel said: ‘We’ve all seen Fiji over the last couple of years as a team that got very far in the last World Cup. They’ve been a regular threat when they’ve got their team together.
‘And this is a team that beat us over in Fiji last year by a decent margin as well. Notably we had a few players away and different personnel but we know the quality of them and they’ll love coming to Murrayfield.
Fiji crashed to a heavy defeat against England but will be keen to bounce back against Scotland
‘It’s their home game this weekend at Murrayfield and they’ll be disappointed that they didn’t click last week against England. But we haven’t seen many performances like that from them. So we’re fully ready for a backlash and ready to inflict our game on them as well.
‘We know the quality that we’re playing against and we have to have a team out there that can win the Test match.’
Scotland will be without injured trio Rory Darge (head), Alex Samuel (knee) and Kyle Steyn (foot) for this weekend as they look to build on the win over Argentina and a strong performance in defeat against South Africa.
Dalziel added: ‘We’ve had a plan for all three of these games this summer. Obviously we’ve got to remember we’re at the end of a long season.
‘There were changes from Argentina into South Africa and we’ll freshen up the team a little bit here again. But this is a game we need to win against a really quality opposition.
‘We’re coming off the back of that South Africa defeat and we’re desperate to finish this tournament right. So, we’ll take an assessment today of where everybody’s at and we’ll pick the right team to go into the weekend.’
Scotland will be the away team on Saturday. They have held onto the home dressing room but will be shunted to the opposition coaching box, although Dalziel doesn’t think any of those practicalities will make a huge difference.
He added: ‘We’ve got two nice coaching boxes — I think it’s actually bigger the away one so we’re looking forward to that. I think the pre-match will be about Fiji and their entertainment. But we’re back at home, it’s Murrayfield and we’re in the same changing room. And if we’re singing a song on the other side of the halfway line it wouldn’t make a big difference.’
