In a modern sporting world in which many athletes have become accomplished at speaking a lot while saying very little, Sione Tuipulotu is a wonderful exception to the rule.
The Scotland captain is rarely anything other than engaging, insightful and brutally honest.
Yet as he prepares his men to take on world champions South Africa in Pretoria on Saturday in the Nations Championship, Tuipulotu is refusing to feed the beast when it comes to expectations of a famous upset victory over the Springboks.
“I’d like to think maybe our confidence is a little bit more quiet, to keep it in the changing room,” said the Glasgow centre.
“There’s no point about talking about anything like that before the game, because you’ve got to go out there and play the world champions in their backyard.
“Maybe this is a little bit of me gaining experience over the last two, three years, it’s better to just leave it to Saturday.
“Of course I’m confident in my group. I’d be stupid as a captain to sit up here and say, ‘I’m not confident in my group and we’re going to go there and lose’ before the game. That’s stupid, you know?
“So of course I’m confident in my group, but we’ll focus on ourselves. We know the challenge at hand and we’re just really excited for it, genuinely.”
In the aftermath of Scotland’s grim collapse against Argentina at Murrayfield last November, Tuipulotu was in unusually combative form with the media, saying he would no longer be making public pronouncements of his team’s ambitions, only to have them thrown back at him when they fail to deliver.
Head coach Gregor Townsend and several of his players have said the recent upturn in results – excellent victories over Wales, England and France in the Six Nations and a stunning win away to Argentina last weekend – can be traced back to the honest internal conversations that took place after that November defeat to the Pumas.
While Tuipulotu is not creating headlines about shocking South Africa at Loftus Versfeld, he does believe the Springboks are coming up against a Scottish side that has improved since their last meeting in 2024.
That day at Murrayfield the Scots matched the ferocious physicality of the Boks for long spells, created a host of chances and failed to take them before the inevitable late South African charge took the game away from them.
“I think we’re a much different team now,” Tuipulotu said. “I would like to think that we’ve kind of evolved into, I suppose, becoming the team that we want to become.
“We saw bits of that in the Six Nations and I was really proud of the performance last week away from home [against Argentina].”
