6N: Scotland v Ireland reaction: Gregor Townsend awaits Darcy Graham injury update

02/09/2025 02:19 PM

DARCY GRAHAM was in hospital undergoing scans as Gregor Townsend spoke to the press following Scotland’s defeat to Ireland this afternoon, after the winger clashed heads with team-mate Finn Russell during the first half of the match.

Russell also left the pitch following the incident to undergo a Head Injury Assessment [HIA] and Townsend revealed that while the stand-off was cleared to return to the action but the coaching group felt that he was exhibiting symptoms which meant he was not fit to go back on.

“Darcy is in hospital. That’s never good in your squad when someone is away at hospital. We are still waiting to go for scans. I believe there are no issues around his neck, but more just seeing where the concussion has come from. I’m just hoping there are no broken bones around the face or skull area,” said Townsend.

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“[Finn] passed his HIA. It was more communication that [assistant coach] Pete Horne and a couple of other guys on the sideline were having with him. We decided it wasn't right. There were a couple of things he wasn’t remembering about plays. So we made the call not to put him back on.”

Asked about Russell’s return to play timeline, Townsend said: “I don’t know the protocols of passing an HIA and then being pulled out. He will now be classed as a failure, [due to] delayed symptoms. I don’t know whether that will be just seven days. It’s based on his record and passing HIA too. There’s no game for Finn next week anyway. We’re hoping he’ll make a full recovery in time for [Scotland’s next match against England in two weekends’ time].”

It was a dispiriting afternoon Scotland, who look no closer to being able to find a way of ending their now 11-match losing streak against Ireland than they were when hammered by their Celtic cousins at the 2023 World Cup, with the high hopes of the start of the championship now severely shaken, and the daunting task of heading to Twickenham to take on an England side bouncing from their surprise victory over France looming over the horizon in two weeks’ time.

“We know it’s a missed opportunity,” reflected Townsend. “Every game that you lose playing for Scotland is a missed opportunity. We have to wait two weeks now for our next opponent, which will be a very tough game

“When you’re 17-0 down, when things haven’t gone well for you and you’ve had to make changes, you do fear that the opposition could build on that, but I was really proud of the way we came back at the end of the first half and then how we got line breaks and we got in behind [and] forced penalties.

“I felt we were getting back into the game, getting to within six points, and then you look at the error off the kick-off, that just gives the momentum back, but up to that stage, we were building back into the game.

“Once they score another try, it’s very tough to get ahead again.”

This feels like a very generous assessment of his team’s performance during the first 35 minutes in particular, when they were a distant second best in almost every meaningful facet of the game.

“If you look at one opponent that we’re playing against, well, obviously they’ve beaten us again, so they’re a quality side,” acknowledged Townsend. “We didn’t play well enough today. We made a few errors in that first 20 minutes. A couple of handling errors, obviously, the penalty that led to a yellow card. It put us under unnecessary pressure. But the middle period was where we’d got back into the game. We just didn’t do enough to get ahead on the scoreboard.

“When we go up to 17-11, Matt Fagerson takes a kick-off, has a great carry. As he hits the ground, he loses the ball. Jamie Dobie gets up for a great high ball, then James Lowe picks it up and gets into our 22. These’ll be easy fix-ups – look after the ball in contact – make sure someone is by the side of Jamie Dobie when he gets up to win the ball back, so that the opposition don’t get the ball.

“I think the bigger learning is we have to do more to stop an opposition like Ireland getting into our 22, because pressure comes from that. In the first half, it was penalties. Penalty advantage, then a try. In the second half, it meant we were having to play from a deep area.

“At times, we managed to get out there, but at times, it’s difficult. I would say today it was errors that gave them the ball back. I think there were times when we did get in behind them. Credit goes to Ireland. They are a quality side. They have been for a number of years and they showed it again today.

“They play on the edge of the laws. We aim to play on the edge of the laws. It’s not that errors are going to disappear. It’s making sure on those dropped balls, you don’t allow opposition into your 22 and give them easy chances to score.

“I think we have to praise Ireland for what they’ve done structurally over the last few years,” Townsend added. “They’ve been in the top two or top three of world rugby for a while now. Sometimes number one, often number two. They’re going for something unprecedented this year, which is a third Six Nations title in a row. No team’s done that. What they’re doing is producing results and quality performances. We, unfortunately, came up against them during this period and have not managed to get ahead on the scoreboard at the end.

“The defeats we’ve had against Ireland have shaped who we are as well. It’s changed a little bit how we play and that’s been transferred to other performances. It didn’t transfer well enough today but you’ve got to take the learnings out of your game.

“No one’s more disappointed than me that we weren’t able to go two from two today. We weren’t able to beat Ireland but they deserved to win. We’ve got to make sure that [not only] this game, but all the last four or five that we’ve played are part of who we are next time we play.

“Today, the better team won. We know we gave them opportunities to get the game into place but I thought given what was going on with going down to 14 for 10 minutes and the changes [after Russell and Graham were injured], the players adapted really well and fought their way back into the game but didn’t do enough to win obviously.

“We’ve lost to the number two team in the world who are going for the third title. I think it would have been a massive shock [for Scotland to win]. They were clear favourites. We believed we could win and we worked hard towards a win. Playing our next opponent was always going to be difficult. We don’t have a brilliant record down there [Twickenham]. It’s a very tough place to play but we do have a very good record recently.

“They’ve just come off the back of winning a great game against France. We know how difficult each game in the Six Nations is. We’ve got to play much better next time to have a chance of bouncing back with a victory.”

Meanwhile, Ireland interim head coach Simon Easterby was satisfied with a job professionally done, with his team now the only undefeated side in the championship, and headed to Cardiff next to take on winless Wales.

“I’m pleased with the application of the players. I think we always knew that we'd have to shut them down and stop them getting time and space and momentum,” he said. "I thought we did really that without the ball but also on attack I felt like we delivered a lot of what we had worked on in the week around trying to attack Scotland in the right way.

"Although we conceded late in the first-half, I thought the scoreline was a reflection of our dominance in the game and maybe we could have been one or two scores up.

“I thought the forward pack was excellent. I think the attack was good. Out set-piece D was excellent and it’s so difficult for a team to get into their rhythm when they’re getting scrappy ball when their delivery of line-outs and scrums isn’t what what they’d like, so I think that unit of both sides of the ball, in attack and defence, laid a great platform for us.

“We set out at the beginning of this championship to work hard, keep getting better, keep challenging each other in terms of the standards, and I think we’re seeing some of that today.

“There is an opportunity which has been well documented and we’ve got to make sure that we prepare in the right way for Wales and go to the Millennium Stadium with the same sort of mindset that we came here with.

Asked about the performance of  21-year-old stand-off Sam Pendergast, who was named official man-of-the-match, Easterby replied: "He was good, wasn't he? Playing in a different game away from home, he delivered not only in terms of mixing his game, attacking the line, his kicking game, but also off the tee, he was excellent.

"It allowed us to keep staying ahead and keep pushing out the scoreline, which on some other days it's tighter than it needs to be, but I thought Sam was excellent. He was good across his game, both in attack and defence."

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