'Esterhuizen was entitled to his say -now it's Van der Merwe's turn'

When South Africa centre Andre Esterhuizen said the other day heâ€TMd "much rather have 18 caps for the Springboks than 70 caps for a different country that I'm not actually born in" there was a predictable response.

In appearing to have a bit of a go at Scotland's South African-born contingent - Duhan van der Merwe, Pierre Schoeman, Dylan Richardson, the injured Kyle Steyn, the recently retired WP Nel and plenty of others before them - this was 'shots fired' before Sunday's Test at Murrayfield.

This was Esterhuizen 'lighting the touchpaper' and 'pouring fuel on the fire'. Apart from the fact no Springbok has any need to engage in mind games with Scotland - they're world champions, have won the last eight meetings and 15 of the last 16 - he was only stating his own truth.

And we want players to be truthful, right? The PR stuff is what we could do without. It was a minor jibe from Esterhuizen but social media being social media, it's caused a reaction. How dare he!

There's no need to be so touchy. When it comes to discussions about countries utilising the granny rule or residency guidelines to deepen their pool of players, Scotland always seems to be in the crosshairs.

Nobody talks about Ireland winning their last Grand Slam with three Kiwis and an Australian in their starting line-up. When you're successful, these things donâ€TMt tend to matter somehow.

That's the focus for Scotland on Sunday. If they beat the Boks it would go down as one of their greatest victories of modern times.

The Boks are the biggest scalp in the game and if it's a scrum penalty won by Schoeman that gives Finn Russell the chance to kick the winning points or a Van der Merwe special in the last minute, the fact they're both South African by birth won't matter a damn.

Esterhuizen would be singing a different tune if he was Van der Merwe or Schoeman or any of the other South Africans who were snubbed or missed by home selectors and went abroad to build a career. South Africa is a rugby player factory. They can't all be Boks.

From Cornell du Preez to Allan Dell, from Oli Kebble to Josh Strauss, we've never detected anything other than appreciation from these South Africans of the opportunity given to them to play for Scotland.

Because Scotland's underage system has been so bad for so long there's been a dependency on various World Rugby rules to grow the player pool. One of David Nucifora's tasks as de facto director of rugby will be to get young Scottish talent flowing a lot more freely.

The dream is for Scotland to wean itself off the dependency. They're focused on it now more than ever. That's commendable.

In the meantime, there's a Test to play and with it a certainty the South Africans in the Scottish team will play as hard as any man who sees a day out of Hawick as a day wasted.

Just because they adopted the jersey instead of being born into it doesn't mean they will be any less fired up for victory on Sunday.

The odds are stacked against them. Scotland have beaten South Africa only five times in 29 games.

It's hard to see it, but if a Van der Merwe proved the difference on the day the irony would be delicious and the noise levels deafening. The chat would be all about where he is now rather than the route that took him here.