Scotland end victory drought over England as Ireland beat Wales to go clear at the top
England’s hopes of a third successive Six Nations title were given a major dent last night as they lost for the first time in 10 years to Scotland.
Gregor Townsend’s side claimed a surprise victory as they prevailed 25-13 at Murrayfield over Eddie Jones’s men.
It is Ireland who lead the way at the top of the table with two rounds of the championship to go after they beat Wales 3727 in Dublin in yesterday’s early match.
Scotland did their damage against England in the first half as they scored three tries to go 22-6 up at the break.
Huw Jones crossed over twice, with Sean Maitland also scoring as Scotland’s attack proved too much for England to handle.
Though England did try and muster a fightback in the second half, with scrum-half Danny Care scoring a try.
But Scotland held on to pick up their second victory of the tournament to spark celebrations among the partisan home crowd.
Earlier in the day, Ireland reland scored five tries in their victory over Wales, with Jacob Stockdale, Bundee Aki, Dan Leavy and Cian Healy all crossing before Stockdale added an intercept with the last play of the game.
“Every time we play them there’s only a score or two in it, the same today,” Ireland scrum-half Conor Murray told ITV Sport of the win.
“Wales are a really good side. They don’t give up and are pretty confident. We’ve had good battles with them, they know us and we know them.”
Wales led early on in proceedings in Dublin and coach Joe Schmidt said he had mixed feelings about the match.
“I thought there was so much quality and then some stuff we can’t afford to repeat,” he said.
“But at the same time there are some great things, one being the support we got from our home crowd. It certainly helped steel our defence.”
Beaten Wales captain Alun Wyn Jones said: “We had to chase the game in the second half.
“We were too late. Another 10 minutes would have been interesting. It was too little, too late.
“We’ll have a look how things go. It’s a disappointing day for us. We have two games to go and will focus on that.”
On Friday night France had picked up their first win of the tournament as they defeated Italy 34-17 in Paris.
Paul Gabrillagues, Hugo Bonneval and Mathieu Bastareaud scored the hosts’ three tries as they won for the first time in nine matches.
France captain Guilhem Guirado said he is not kidding himself that victory over Italy has prepared France for the tougher challenges to come against England and Wales.
But having already lost to Ireland and Scotland and with England up next, Guirado insisted France still have a lot of work to do.
“It’s good, seriously. After one year and all the struggles of last week,” said Guirado, referring to France’s controversial late night out in Edinburgh following their defeat to Scotland, after which eight players where disciplined by the French Federation with one-game bans.
“We won’t brag but we’re happy to win again. But we’re not kidding ourselves, we’re quite frustrated with the way we played because we didn’t get the bonus point in the end and we tried to get it,” he added of their failure to find a fourth try.
“I’m happy because we had to win and we had to react, but not happy because there’s still a lot of work to do from tomorrow.”