The bedlam brought real belief but no happy ending
ATWICKENHAM experience like no other. A t artan takeover of Rugby HQ that will live long in the memory. Yet there was something horribly familiar about the way it all ended.
A hard-luck story, a piece of disputed and debatable refereeing, a heartache that will l ast a lifetime for the players who came so close to doing something that no Scottish side had done since 1991.
Referee Craig Joubert ran straight off the pitch at full-time, not even looking around for a handshake as he scurried up the tunnel within a heartbeat of blowing his whistle for the final time on a tumultuous afternoon.
Well might you run, Mr Joubert. Because it was your interventions, as predictable as they were telling, that ultimately decided the most gripping and engrossing of the weekend’s four quarter-finals.
Sure, Australia deserve credit for scoring five tries and — just as importantly — getting the bounces and decisions they needed, when they needed them.
But let’s not pretend they were anything other than quaking in their boots until that late slippery i ncident t hat handed t hem victory with a penalty generously described as debatable.
Try to get someone at the IRB to answer this honestly. If the roles had been reversed and the Aussies, the All Blacks or Springboks had committed exactly the same offside ‘offence’ amid the chaos of knock- ons, f l ailing arms and bouncing bodies, would any ref on their books have awarded a penalty to deny them victory?
Jon Welsh perhaps shouldn’t have picked the ball up. It looked like it had been knocked on. But replays showed that Australia’s Nick Phipps got the final touch. Certainly, what happened can’t have been clear to anyone in the middle of the madness. It just stinks.
Until then, we had dared to believe. As a Scottish rain began to fall upon this famous corner of south- west London and the atmosphere inside Twickers grew ever more thunderous, there was a genuine feeling that, this time, things would be different.
For once, we were going to be the guys who held their nerve. were going to be the steely-eyed winners who held on when it mattered, punishing the other guys for failing to cope with the pressure.
Instead of progressing to the semis for the first time in 24 years, though, Scotland are going home.
Vern Cotter (right) and his men were dragged from the brink of glory to t he depths of injured and angered despair in the space of a f ew sickening seconds.
Their disgust was shared by the vast majority of the crowd gathered. Of the 77,110 inside the stadium, it would be stretching credulity to assign the Australians no more than the 110 as their portion of the support. But there was a clear 90-10 split favouring the Scots.
Even though their instinct was to besiege the officials’ changing room, the Scots fans could hardly feel anything but proud in their team of underdogs.
Sure, Scotland were at least partial architects of their own demise. You can’t continually concede tries and yet hope to win a game of rugby.
But this wasn’t the performance of a team whitewashed in the Six Nations just a few short months ago.
These Aussie boys, they’re everything we’re not. Tanned to the point of glowing with healthy vitality, the natural self-deprecating humour to be found among most other peoples has been replaced by a sense of unshakeable self-confidence.
To put it more succinctly, they’re a big-headed bunch of blowhards. Fun to watch when they’re playing against someone else, they acquire a certain annoyance factor in direct opposition.
The first half was utterly remarkable. Scotland somehow were one point ahead at the break.
They conceded three tries in that 40 minutes and, to be blunt, came off second best in almost every other category that counts — except the scoreboard.
With a scrum performance pitched somewhere between perfection and force of nature, Cotter’s men seemed to defy the laws of physics.
They weren’t even in Australia territory until almost a quarter of an hour — and one Aussie try — had gone past in the blink of an eye. When they did establish themselves inside the opposition 22, though, Twickers burst into life.
They half-bludgeoned and halfsmuggled their way to a try that sent the ‘home’ crowd berserk.
Australia scored tries with ease and, but for Bernard Foley’s poor kicking, might have been out of sight. Scotland provoked bedlam with a second try to move within a point, then James Slipper chucked a loose ball into the arms of Mark Bennett for the most famous Scottish try since… well, take your pick. Greig Laid law converted with six minutes left.
Credit Australia for finding a way to win. Curse Joubert, whose earlier yellow card f or Sean Maitland for a deliberate knockon had already made a mockery of his judgment. And retreat into the familiar Scottish feeling of proud, dismal defeat.