2025 Six Nations: Scotland 18-32 Ireland – The Talking Points

02/19/2025 10:10 AM

Scotland came into the second week of the 2025 Six Nations hopeful of reversing their long-standing misery against Ireland, who were in turn seeking their 11th consecutive win over us.

The disappointing result from Murrayfield put Ireland on track for a third tournament in a row (even this early it is safe to talk about it) and left Scotland most likely facing a battle for somewhere between third and fourth – possibly even fifth if Wales can get a bounce from finally ditching Warren Gatland.

The Big Mo

Scotland may be the most momentum unaware team in the top ten of world rugby (Squidge said something similar recently). They’re so bad at detecting momentum in a game of rugby it hurts. They never say die, I’ll give them that, but sometimes they’ll work their way back into a game only to hand momentum back with a forehead-smashingly stupid blunder – and it’s been like this for decades.

They are also very bad for overreacting to such things going against them, which tends to result only in compounding their misfortune with further errors, often disciplinary. We’ve talked about it regularly and often on these pages and the really well drilled teams like Ireland or South Africa don’t give you the wee openings Scotland need to score those wonder tries and scrape wins. Instead, they end up with egg on their face.

It was harder to tell if a game was going your way (but not impossible) back before everyone had walkie-talkies but now there is absolutely no excuse for messaging between coaches and players to not take notice of what is happening in front of them. Sadly in Scotland’s case it’s often not a case of “you shouldn’t have kicked the points there” type decisions, but more lapses in individual concentration that are to blame. They shouldn’t really need to be told “this next five minutes is huge, don’t switch off”.

At 11-17 with half an hour left in the game, Scotland had just scored a penalty after a period of sustained pressure on the Irish line. Ireland were slow-playing the walk back up field to regather, to refocus. They never really looked rattled in the game but this was the closest they came to being, say, a little unsettled.

Scotland, therefore, instead of keeping the foot on the throat, immediately knocked on at the restart. Result: Ireland possession on the Scottish 22. At the resultant scrum: Ireland free kick. Less than 4 mins later, following some back and forth played well inside the Scottish half, New Zealander James Lowe was over the line and the game was all but done.

Can We Blame The Second Row?

Scotland’s locks are not having a particularly great tournament. Townsend needs to inject some dynamism into this department as the lack of speed at the ruck clearouts is a clear difference between us and Ireland. We maybe can’t expect a 1-15 all proficient in clearouts like Ireland have, but our pack suffers badly by comparison.

The lineout is not exactly firing on all cylinders either, and perhaps Townsend needs to bring in fresher legs sooner rather than later, even if they will be less experienced.

Can We Blame The Head Clash?

Losing Finn Russell and Darcy Graham after only 20 minutes was not to blame for the loss. It was perhaps to blame for Scotland continuing to play like strangers and not really getting into the game until moments before half-time when they scored through Duhan’s wonder finish.

Even then, their are appearance as a credible threat in the second half was short-lived and had all but dried up by the hour mark. Tom Jordan did reasonably well at 10 where he has played plenty for Glasgow (sorry Matt Williams) but Townsend’s decision to field a 6:2 bench split backfired spectacularly with Jamie Dobie – an excellent scrum-half and an okay winger – given very little to do on the wing and Ben White visibly burst by the end having played a full 80 minutes.

Can We Blame The Officials?

Scotland are also very bad at getting on the wrong side of referees, especially ones they haven’t haven’t been officiated by before. Taking twenty minutes to half an hour to get on the same page as the referee is too long at test level.

A good example of this: two shoves off the ball that we saw within the first 13 minutes of the game. The first was Matt Fagerson removing a meandering Irish runner who was impeding him slightly for a kick chase, but who made enough of a meal of it that Doleman gave a penalty against. Minutes later Duhan van der Merwe shoved Calvin Nash out of the way again chasing a kicked ball. The circumstances on the field were not remotely identical but the optics were the same: there was a Scotland player knocking an Ireland player over off the ball. It looks like a pattern so for the officials it is time to stamp one’s authority on the game, and Duhan was duly sent to the bin for a crime he didn’t need to commit.

Referee James Doleman was maybe slightly overawed by Ireland’s reputation as he let them away with quite a few, if not murders at the breakdown – then possibly cases of manslaughter. That doesn’t mean to say it was all one way traffic – it wasn’t – or that the breakdown officiating was Scotland’s undoing.

Probably Just Blame Ireland

The main reason Scotland lost this game was Ireland were better than than them in every facet of the game.

Beirne is better at falling over a feigning a heinous injury than Ben White is a pretending he was eye-gouged.

Joking aside, Ireland were much better at the at the counter-rucking safe in the knowledge that for every successful Scotland half break (which Scotland are quite good at, especially Kinghorn and Van der Merwe) they would have the two or three players – usually they’re capable with two – ready to counter-ruck the isolated player in the tackle. That turns that half-break that got the crowd so excited into Ireland possession; another bad day the office

Even not particualrly isolated players were having a torrid time at the breakdown, where Ireland are quite simply better drilled and more streetwise than Scotland.

Whether Scotland can learn their lessons in time for a visit to Twickenham this weekend remains to be seen.

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