Pienaar and Spies in for Springboks

South Africa coach Peter de Villiers has made two changes for Saturday’s Test against England, following last week’s 21-17 defeat by Scotland.

The Ulster scrum-half Ruan Pienaar has returned in place of Francois Hougaard and Pierre Spies takes over at number eight from Ryan Kankowski, who drops out of the 22-man squad altogether.

De Villiers, under pressure following the Scotland defeat, insisted he had dismissed the idea of making wholesale changes.

“There is no panic. This team has all the ability we need – but what we all know is that we have to execute more accurately than we did against Scotland,” he said.

“That game is behind us now but we’ve looked hard at the lessons of it and know that we can’t allow let ourselves to make as many mistakes in our basic execution.”

The Springboks beat Ireland in Dublin and came from behind to overhaul Wales in Cardiff – but De Villiers expects a resurgent England to be their toughest test of the tour.

Martin Johnson’s men head into the game on the back of victories over Australia and Samoa.

“England have made good progress since they started their tour to Australia this year and will be full of confidence,” said De Villiers.

“A full Twickenham will ensure that this is the toughest Test of the tour for us.

“But Saturday’s performance wasn’t a true reflection of the talent in this squad and the players want to put that right and end the Test season on a high.”

South Africa team to play England at Twickenham on Saturday, November 27; kick-off 2.30pm:

Z Kirchner (Blue Bulls); G Aplon (Western Province), F Steyn (Racing Metro), J de Villiers (Western Province), L Mvovo (Sharks); M Steyn (Blue Bulls), R Pienaar (Ulster); T Mtawarira (Sharks), B du Plessis (Sharks), J du Plessis (Sharks), B Botha (Blue Bulls), V Matfield (Blue Bulls, capt), D Stegmann (Blue Bulls), J Smith (Cheetahs), P Spies (Blue Bulls).

Replacements: A Strauss (Cheetahs), CJ van der Linde (Cheetahs), F van der Merwe (Blue Bulls), W Alberts (Sharks), F Hougaard (Blue Bulls), P Lambie (Sharks), A Jacobs (Sharks).