Mistakes spurred us on to cause upset, says Hogg
STUART Hogg is convinced taking the ‘heat’ for his own mistakes early in the Six Nations helped Scotland as a team bounce back in style.
The Scotland skipper has been praised for his leadership by head coach Gregor Townsend after having to deal with highprofile blunders during his maiden competition in the role.
The 27-year-old fumbled the ball over the try line when a score would have put the Scots in control during the 19-12 defeat to Ireland on the opening weekend.
And the Exeter Chiefs fullback then carried the ball over his own line to gift England the scrum from which they scored the only try of the game in the Auld Enemy’s 13-6 victory at Murrayfield a week later.
But Hogg reckons his readiness to hold his hands up and personally admit his errors played a part in the collective improvements the side made.
He said: “I got a lot of heat over the first couple of weeks of the Six Nations for the mistakes that were made. But they were on me. If I was captain or not captain I would still have been down and hurt by what happened. But I need to be in a position to bounce through them.
“Nothing’s ever going to be perfect. Perfect doesn’t exist so don’t go chasing it.
“That’s the reason the boys maybe started to loosen off a bit and started expressing themselves during the Six Nations, because they were like, ‘Right, mistakes will happen, get on with our next job’.”
The triumph over France on March 8 wrecked Les Bleus’ dreams of a Grand Slam and Hogg is convinced Scotland deserved more credit for the success. He added to the Official Scottish Rugby Podcast: “I just think it’s the world that we live in nowadays, that people concentrate on the negative stuff. There were a few mistakes, don’t get me wrong, but there was a lot of good stuff that happened along the way.
“Not many people will look at the fact we beat France, which was a massive result for us. Nobody was expecting us to win that game and they were concentrating on the mistakes that happened previous to that.”