SACRE BLEUS
Watson’s woes as Scots blow chance to bury French jinx
SCOTLAND forward Hamish Watson insisted last night that his team had passed up a historic opportunity to win in Paris for the first time this century after they went down to a 22-16 defeat in the Six Nations Championship.
The Scots outscored France two tries to win, with the scores coming from Glasgow Warriors players Stuart Hogg, making his 50th appearance, and Tim Swinson.
But the home team finished more strongly, and two penalties from stand-off Camille Lopez gave them a win they just abou t deserved.
The losing bonus point was little consolation for Watson, who thought that with a little more composure - as they had shown in beating Ireland at Murrayfield eight days earlier - Scotland would have won at the Stade de France for the first time since 1999. “We could definitely have won that game,” Watson said. “It’s not one of those days when you’re thinking the worst, that they were a lot better than us. We definitely could have won it.
“So that’s more frustrating. But we also know what went wrong. We’ll try to fix that for the Wales game [at Murrayfield a week on Saturday].
“Obviously everyone is pretty gutted because we knew we hadn’t won here since ’99. We were in the lead and definitely in a position to win – so everyone is disappointed because we could have won it.”
Scotland knew that the bigger French forwards were going to try and steamroller them, but the plan was to tire them out.
Instead, it was France who finished the stronger, while the visitors lost several key players to injury.
CAPTAIN Greig Laidlaw was taken off with an ankle injury before halftime and later left the ground on crutches. John Barclay, who took over as skipper, also had to go off injured before half-time, leaving the Warriors’ Jonny Gray to be captain.
And John Hardie, who replaced Barclay, also had to go off injured not long after the start of the second half.
An update on how bad those injuries are is expected today.
“That was very tough,” Watson continued. “Obviously they’ve got big players, a big pack, so it was pretty bruising.
“I think when we got the ball and held on to it, we all made yards. At times, though, we would just give the ball away a bit stupidly.
“There were a lot of turnovers in the game. We didn’t look after it as well as we wanted.
“So when we didn’t stick to our game plan, it didn’t go our way.
“Yes, the game was there to be won. Definitely.
“When Tim scored that try, I think you saw that France were there for the taking.
“Then, from the kick-off, we gave away the ball straight away – and they scored a penalty two minutes later. They managed to draw it level pretty quickly.
“If we had kept that lead and just exited properly, maybe got another penalty, their tails would have gone down. We could definitely have gone on and won the game.
“We’re still in the Championship, definitely. We’ve got Wales at home, which is a huge game for us.
“We won our first game at home – so there’s no reason why we can’t beat Wales.”