The Scot who sounds slightly incongruous in a Springbok Green Blazer thinks his homeland backs Scotland to reach the quarter-finals and believes they have a team “that can do a lot of damage”.
Former Gala lock Richie Gray has been the breakdown coach for South Africa for the last three years, the specialist that fine-tunes the contact area where the Springboks were so successful in their 34-16 victory over Scotland in Newcastle on Saturday.
Gray, formerly head of the Border Reivers Academy until it was closed by the SRU and who coached several players in the Scotland team like Stuart Hogg, Ross Ford and Grieg Laidlaw, admits that coaching against his native country is tough.
“You’d be a complete liar if you said as a coach it was easy to play against your own country, and I would never say that,” he said.
“There is a total different emotion attached to it. But at the end of the day I want my guys to be the best in the competition. That’s the game we’re in – winning and losing.”
But while satisfied with South Africa’s performance on Saturday, he thinks the Scots are going places.
“Scotland are not far away from being a very good team, it’s been building for the last three years, not just in the past six or eight weeks,” he said. “They’ve got a strong core of players, that group from Glasgow who are now used to winning.
“I’ve been involved with Scottish rugby for many years and losing can be a habit as much as winning. Gregor (Townsend) has done a great job at Glasgow, developed a real winning mentality and that’s come down to Scotland set-up and I think they are a very competitive unit.
“I think they have a team there that can do a lot of damage. They’re very dangerous to play, put on a lot of width, good steppers, good basic skills and passers. They’re a difficult side to play against.”
And he expects them to beat Samoa next week to book their last eight place.
“After losing to Japan that’s Samoa’s World Cup over. So it’s really how they motivate themselves this week now.
“It’s down to Scotland now to go and win that now. Samoa will still be physical and Scotland will have to count the knocks they’ve picked up here. But you would back Scotland to go through, and hopefully we will too.”
Gray was proud to see many of the youngsters he coached in Gala where he still lives, working out of a suitcase when the SARU need him – as part of the Scotland team.
“I coach because I want to make players better,” he said. “I worked with guys like Hoggy, Ross Ford, Richie Vernon, Greig Laidlaw, they all came through the Borders Academy.
“It’s great to see them at the international level, compete and dangerous players. They’re the players we’ve been talking about all week.
“The only thing that made it any easier today is because there were no Gala boys in the Scotland team. Grieg’s wife is from Gala I suppose, but then again everyone knows the most beautiful girls in Scotland come from Gala!”
Gray identified the will to make up for the “disaster” of the Japan game as the key to South Africa’s turnaround.
“There has been a completely different animal going out on the field and every game is a final for us now,” he said.
“Even now, this game (against Scotland) means nothing now because we’ve got to beat America on Wednesday. We put ourselves in that position and we’ll get ourselves out of it.
“I just felt that today it was another step up from Samoa. A closely contested game, very physical. I thought the group just brought it today.”
South African head coach Heyneke Meyer said he would have been happy to win by a single point.
“I’ll take three tries to one any day,” he said. “The fourth would have been a blessing, but we just needed to win by one point.
“It was a clinical performance. Scotland are a quality side and once they get go-forward they are really dangerous. Our defence did well to keep them down to one try.”