Hadden is hoping his side can bounce back from their defeat at the hands of the All Blacks last weekend © Getty Images

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Players/Officials: Frank Hadden

Teams: Scotland | South Africa

Scotland coach Frank Hadden insists his team have learned their lessons from their New Zealand mauling and are confident of victory over South Africa on Saturday.

Hadden's men were beaten 32-6 at Murrayfield by a second-string All Blacks side and face arguably an even more daunting task against the reigning world champions in their second autumn international. But Scotland's head coach believes the defeat was the perfect warm-up for the Springboks.

"Last Saturday was an invaluable opportunity to get used to the pace and intensity of rugby in the southern hemisphere," Hadden said. "I believe that experience will stand us in good stead this week. I thought we did some good things last week.

"You have to play well to create almost 15 reasonable opportunities to score against New Zealand, and this weekend we are determined to try and turn these chances into points. A number of opportunities we created on Saturday would have been turned into scores by sides like the All Blacks - and that's about reading the situations you're in, relating to the players in your team, and taking advantage of what's in front of you. That's what we need to get better at."

Of the missed chances, he added: "I hate it - it does my head in - but you have to acknowledge that we created a lot of opportunities last weekend. It will be very tough for us to score this weekend and all our efforts are on turning whatever pressure we have into points.

"We feel if we take this game down the stretch and the crowd get behind us, we're more than capable of doing something special against the world champions. In some ways, last weekend's match wasn't dissimilar to the first Test in Argentina (during the summer), where we dominated the territory and possession but lost the game.

"In the second Test, we managed to pick up a couple of tries on the counter-attack and we're aware these are the areas you get opportunities to score nowadays, and that is something we're working on."

Hadden has only made one change to the team which started against New Zealand, with Rory Lamont replacing brother Sean on the left wing. That switch was enforced after the older sibling injured his hamstring on Saturday and was ruled out of the remainder of the autumn Test schedule.

Hadden said: "Given that this side has had very little preparation time, we felt it made sense to keep it largely intact and try to develop some of the good things we did last weekend and iron out some of the rougher edges."

Simon Taylor, who pulled out of the team to play the All Blacks with a calf complaint, has not recovered in time to reclaim the number eight jersey, so Allister Hogg once again deputises. Meanwhile, winger Thom Evans is suffering from a stiff neck, while second-rowers Jim Hamilton and Nathan Hines picked up ankle and wrist injuries respectively at the weekend.

Hadden said: "There are injury concerns. If Nathan or Jim don't make it, Matt Mustchin will go into the second row and Al Strokosch will come onto the bench. If Thom or Rory don't make it, Simon will come straight in there, but at this juncture we expect them all to make it. Simon is staying with us because he's not yet ruled out of the Canada game."

Strokosch's exclusion from the team for a second consecutive weekend is certain to raise more than a few eyebrows. The hard-hitting Gloucester flanker has made a big impact in a short time in international rugby and has been outstanding since moving to England from Edinburgh just over a year ago.

Hadden said: "We didn't just rubber-stamp last week's side. We talked long and hard about individual positions, as we always do, and I'd say Alasdair Strokosch could consider himself extremely unlucky not to be selected after the way he's played for Scotland. We expect this weekend to be a more confrontational encounter than last week and also there is absolutely no doubt in the minds of myself and (forward's coach) Mike Brewer that Jason White is way ahead of Alasdair at this stage in his understanding of what we're doing in the line-out."