South Africa assistant coach Dick Muir admitted he had never seen a Springbok front five so comprehensively outmuscled as they were in the shock 22-17 defeat to Leicester.
The Tigers marked the return of midweek warm-up matches to the autumn international calendar by exposing glaring weaknesses in the world champions' pack ahead of their Tests against France, Italy and Ireland.
In temporary charge before the arrival of Peter de Villiers, Muir said: "I don't think I've ever seen (a South Africa pack) as bad as that, especially from a coaching perspective. We were given a bit of a lesson at the scrums."
Muir named nine uncapped players in his matchday squad, but the presence of Jannie du Plessis and Danie Rossouw ensured they were no pushover for the Guinness Premiership champions.
"You can't play this game without any possession," added Muir. "We were poor at the breakdown and poor at set pieces so we couldn't get the game going.
"We just move on. We came over here with an experiment and perhaps it didn't come off as planned.
"Hats off to the Tigers. They were incredibly strong in that department so we've got to go back to the drawing board."
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Hardly an average club side... Tigers were playing practically there second string and still completely outclassed South Africa, I was there and could not believe what I was seeing. South Africa should have won easily but they didn't and that's a testament to the great club that Leicester is.
Really so what your saying is that the next generation of springboks or the second place players at each position are no better than an average club side, not good eh
What that game showed was south africa's lack of strength in depth. Undoubtably they have the best 15 in the world but if they have an injury crisis like england they will be in a lot of trouble.
SA rested their BIG PLAYERS for the international games you stuip @#$% . Vetkoeke
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