Captain Greig Laidlaw admitted he was “disappointed” with Scotland’s 26-20 defeat at the hands of South Africa yesterday (Saturday), but insisted the side is “moving in the right direction” to compete with the world’s best teams.

Laidlaw, who converted both Scottish tries by Pete Horne and Hamish Watson, and kicked two penalties before being replaced by Ali Price, was “disappointed” to have seen his side defeated by the Springboks, who are rejuvenated under Head Coach Rassie Erasmus.

The Clermont scrum-half looked back on his decision, around the hour mark, to turn down a kick at the posts when Scotland were awarded a penalty inside the visitors’ 22, instead opting to kick to touch – the resultant lineout came to nothing.

“In hindsight it’s easy,” said Laidlaw in the post-match press conference. He added: “I thought about kicking the points but the two previous mauls probably pushed us into the decision to go to the corner.

“I backed the team but it was disappointing. We could have moved the scoreboard on.

“We’ll learn but we need to move on to next week and finish strongly.”

Laidlaw felt his side lost the battle of the breakdown, and felt they could have stayed on their feet longer in contact in an attempt to get the ball wide, as Huw Jones did to set-up Horne’s try.

“We had a good chat with Gregor at half time and he showed us a few good opportunities. We were expecting that [South Africa to bring physicality in defence] but we maybe could have held our feet a bit longer and got it to the width.

“The try up the left hand side we did that, got the ball round them and scored a lovely try. It was just disappointing we couldn’t do that another couple of times to open them up.”

But the 32-year-old refused to be too downbeat and said the side are “right up there” with the best teams in the world.

“Gregor spoke in the changing room at the end that he feels South Africa are right up there in terms of the top two or three teams [in the world] and we’re right in these games and on another day we can win.

“We’ve got to bounce back next week and put in a strong performance at BT Murrayfield.”