6N: England v Scotland debrief: A cruel game but did Scotland get what they deserved?

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IT is a cruel game. Scotland certainly didn’t get back what they put into their attempt to secure a third consecutive success at Twickenham. Had Finn Russell – an excellent goal-kicker who was the most accurate in the Six Nations last year with a 95.7% success rate – managed just one of his three difficult conversion attempts, things could well have panned out very differently indeed. But it wasn’t to be.

Success with the last of those three attempts at goal would almost definitely have secured another successful London raid for Gregor Townsend‘s men. We can’t be as certain about the implications of the two first half misses because there was still so much water to flow under the bridge at that point, and whose to say how a five or seven point half-time lead might have changed the mindset of either team or the general tenor of the game.

Could Duhan van der Merwe have narrowed the arc of his run, or cut back inside, or worked something with Ewan Ashman on his outside to provide Russell with an easier conversion opportunity after that late Scotland score? It is one of those unanswerable rugby questions which will be debated long and hard on social media, in comments sections and maybe even in rugby clubhouses for the next fortnight without ever reaching a definitive conclusion.

6N: England v Scotland: Scotland player ratings

6N England v Scotland reaction: Gregor Townsend upbeat in defeat

6N: England v Scotland report: hosts escape to victory after late Finn Russell miss

Scotland are entitled to feel unlucky but that’s not to say they categorically deserved more. From repeatedly ripping England wide open thorough their razor-sharp back play in the first half, they fell out of the game for a long period of the second period, unable to produce the sort of quick ball required for Russell to pull the strings, sending the likes of Huw Jones, van der Merwe and the excellent Kyle Rowe on those penetrative runs which had the home team in so much trouble during the first 40 minutes. They got stuck trucking it up through the forwards without generating the go-forward required to let rip in the wider channels.

For Scottish rugby fans, it felt a bit like watching brave, dynamic Glasgow Warriors in the first half, and then Edinburgh after the break. As Townsend said post-match, it was inevitable that England would regroup at half-time, and some of their defence and competitiveness at the breakdown during the second 40 was top notch, but the problem for Scotland was not so much that they didn’t have a Plan B as that they weren’t able to carry on imposing Plan A which was working so well for them. In the final reckoning, Scotland didn’t do enough to dispel their reputation as not quite muscular and abrasive enough up front to play the momentum game required to make use of their undoubted strength as a backline who are almost impossible to defend against when on the front foot.

What’s the old rugby saying about forwards deciding who wins matches and backs deciding by how much?

Being only three-points ahead at half-time may have been slightly frustrating for the Scots given the extent of their superiority at that stage, but it was far from disastrous. That’s how rugby works. They had done the softening up bit and if they could keep that momentum going  in the second half then there would be a breaking point and the scoreboard reward would follow thereafter. It is an 80 minute game and, sadly, Scotland just don’t seem to have the grunt to sustain the levels required – whether in attack or defence – throughout the ebbs and flows of the whole contest, so they drop out of the contest at crucial moments and they give away costly penalties which leave them chasing games which they had been in total command of.

Scotland were lucky on this occasion to be up against an England side so bereft of attacking guile that they couldn’t put Scotland to the sword in the second half once they’d got on top by upping their defensive and breakdown intensity, in the way that Ireland did from the start a fortnight ago – which helps explain why the visitors were still in the contest during those final agonising minutes.

At least we know that Russell is too level-headed to let his late miss dent his natural sense of self-assurance.

“You’re asking the wrong person about goal-kicking because I was not the best,” quipped Townsend post match. “But last year I think he was on 95 percent and he’s been an excellent goal-kicker. It takes more than just the skill of kicking. It takes a lot of mental focus and blocking things out. 

“Yes, of course there’ll be things we’ve got to work on and improve and we’ll focus on that. But just now it’s a feeling of pride that the players went out and played some really good rugby and came very close to winning. On the balance of our play, we could have scored another couple of tries, which would have been an amazing effort down here.”

Onwards now to Wales, who gave understrength Ireland a fright on Saturday afternoon in their first match under interim head coach Matt Sherratt, and who will head up to Murrayfield in two weekend’s time desperate to prove that rumours of rugby’s demise in the Principality have been grossly exaggerated.

“They played well [against Ireland],” acknowledged Townsend. “They moved the ball a lot as well so it’s going to be a real test for our defence. They won a lot of scrum penalties against a very good Irish pack. That’s pretty much all I can analyse from what I was watching on the phone on the bus [on the way to Twickenham] but they will be full of positivity and feeling maybe they’ve got nothing to lose in their final two games, so that’s a dangerous opponent.  

“We asked the players to show who we are as a team, and that’s attack, defence, but also what it means to play for Scotland in terms of the effort required, and they showed that today in a tough venue against a very good team. We just need to make sure that that continues in our next two games.”

Townsend added that he expects to have Darcy Graham back from concussion in time to be in the frame for the Wales game, with Kyle Steyn potentially available as well after recovering from an ankle injury, meaning some touch decisions are going to have to be made when selecting the back-three for that match.

“He [Steyn] might be touch and go for the last two games, but he’s doing all he can to be fit,” said Townsend “Kyle Rowe’s certainly in the mix. The way he’s played for Scotland, the way he’s played for Glasgow. Darcy has been great too. He was outstanding against Italy. Darcy will return to contact by the end of next week, so he’ll have full training ahead of Wales. 

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6N: England v Scotland: Scotland player ratings

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