Beating Welsh at their own game always a feat to savour

With the boot of Russell back on track, signature Scots display leaves esteemed visitors short of answers, writes Stewart Fisher

BEING good at rugby is part of Welsh identity, in the same way that being rubbish at football has become part of being Scottish. So efficient are they at churning out heroes of the oval-ball game that you might believe the rudiments of rucking and mauling are taught in nursery classes.

So whenever our boys in blue can show the nation which brought you JPR Williams, Gareth Edwards, Jonathan Davies, Ieuan Evans and George North a thing or two, it is a day to be treasured. That was the case yesterday as the Welsh were sent back home from Murrayfield with scarlet faces for the first time since 2007.

Scotland march to Twickenham in a fortnight’s time will come with the aim of completing their first Triple Crown since 1990, while a victory back here against Italy in their final match would see them complete their first home clean sweep of the Six Nations era.

The win over Wales was a victory which Scotland had to fight like Lions for – not least because they were eye-balling so many of their direct competitors for places in the British & Irish Lions tour to New Zealand this summer.

Halfpenny v Hogg, Biggar v Russell, Wyn Jones against the Gray brothers; everywhere you looked, this doubled as a trial match for the watching former Wales coach Warren Gatland as he considers his options for the trip to his homeland. There were other top performers in Welsh colours besides – not least scrum-half Rhys Webb – but this was a signature Scottish performance which left Wales coach, and Lions attack coach, Rob Howley scrabbling around for answers.

That 2007 victory here came in a tryless match – courtesy of seven penalties from Scotland’s all-time top points scorer Chris Paterson, against three from Wales’ Stephen Jones – but few perhaps predicted a similar kind of kicking day from Finn Russell, considering he had managed to fluff his lines from just yards out with a conversion against France last time out.

There might even have been a few nerves when the No 10 stood over an early sighter for three points from an eerily similar position, but we needn’t have worried.

Aside from one missed touch early on, Russell was flawless.

The fly-half potted all five of his penalties and two conversions, one of which came after bouncing off a post at an oblique angle. The man of the match’s kicking paved the way for one of Scotland’s most fruitful ways of advancing the ball, via unerring catches by the likes of Tim Visser.

The scrum-half alongside him, at least for the first hour, didn’t do too badly either. Ali Price, who was making his first start, led the Welsh giants a merry dance at times and produced some big tackles too. Typically, this Scotland team’s swashbuckling back division ran in two tries of which even the likes of JPR Williams would have been proud, both of which involved tiptoeing up the touchline.

First, Tommy Seymour touched down in the corner after Stuart Hogg’s delayed pass released Tim Visser, then Visser himself got in on the act after Russell and Hogg had spotted the possibilities.

OK, so Liam Williams continued his knack of scoring a try in every Six Nations match when he benefited from a tap Webb free-kick to put Scotland into early arrears, and the TMO twice saved Scotland from further breaks from the savvy scrum-half.

But Scotland fought fire with fire and deserved everything they got here. Already without Greig Laidlaw, they soon lost John Hardie and Gordon Reid to knocks in an attritional contest. But Scotland showed they, too, are made of stern stuff. And at least one man will return to Llanelli with a smile on his face: Scotland’s stand-in captain and Scarlets back row, John Barclay.