'No excuses' says Williams

Scotland coach Matt Williams gave a brutally honest assessment of his side's performance after they were outplayed in every department in the 45-10 defeat at the hands of South Africa.

Bok winger Bryan Habana scored two intercept tries, while Jaque Fourie, Jaco van der Westhuyzen and Solly Tyibilika also crossed as the Tri-Nations champions cruised to victory at Murrayfield.

The defeat came as a crushing blow to the Scots after the progress which has been made under Williams, whose side pushed Australia all the way last week.

"That performance was not acceptable," said Williams after the game.

"We are not looking for excuses or to pass the buck. It was not acceptable.

"There were too many individual errors made and too many dropped balls. We came here thinking we could win but then put up that performance and it's not acceptable.

"I don't want to rationalise it too much right now but we lost our composure early on and never got it back. The loss of Chris (Cusiter) and Nathan (Hines) was a difficulty but is no excuse."

Williams felt the two Habana tries were crucial to the outcome, especially the second, which came as Scotland pressed for another try against the Springboks just before half-time, who at the time hade two players in the sin-bin.

"The two intercept tries were hard to take. The second one was the game, and showed just like in the first game with Australia here that you can't give quality sides easy tries," said Williams.

"We said during the week you can't throw long passes against South Africa, but we did that and paid heavily for it.

"Individuals have to take responsibility for dropped ball. It was difficult out there, but it was the same for both teams and they dropped much less than us."

Williams was particularly annoyed at the result and performance, coming as it did on the back on the fine effort against Australia at Hampden Park.

"The (autumn) series has been a positive. We feel we've made progress in the summer and then in these matches and today we were supposed to show how far we'd come," he said.

"But instead we produced that performance and it's very disappointing. We know what we need to work on."