Scots laugh off any talk of collusion with Ireland

Scotland assistant coach Peter Horne laughed off any concerns from the South Africa camp that the Scots and Ireland may conspire to eliminate the Springboks with an unlikely result that suits both teams in Saturday night's Pool B showdown in Paris.

The most realistic outcome is that only one of Ireland or Scotland will progress to the quarter-finals alongside the reigning champions.

However, there is a scenario whereby a bonus-point victory for the Scots by a margin of 21 points or more combined with Ireland collecting a losing bonus point for scoring at least four tries would put both nations in the quarter-finals while knocking out South Africa.

South Africa head coach Jacques Nienaber - when asked by a journalist after his team's victory over Tonga on Sunday whether he had any worries about a carve-up that suited both Scotland and Ireland - said such a result would be a sign of "match-fixing".

"Could I believe in a scenario that they will decide 'do we want to get this amount of points and then get South Africa out of the way?"' mused Nienaber.

"That would probably be match-fixing, I would say. I hope not. Rugby is clean. We wear those t-shirts so hopefully not because that would be extremely disappointing."

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Scotland assistant coach Horne, speaking at their training base in Nice on Tuesday afternoon, gave short shrift to such a notion.

"Yeah," he laughed when asked if it was "ridiculous" to suggest the two teams might collude.

"We've not even thought about it. We were briefed about it before this press conference, but, prior to that, I hadn't even seen the comments.

"It's nothing that we've spoken about. We've just focused on the job we have to do on