MISTAKES FRUSTRATE U20 COACH MURRAY

Kenny Murray was left immensely frustrated after basic errors cost his Scotland side dearly in their 45-15 Six Nations Under-20 Summer Series defeat to Wales.

Scotland came up against a determined Wales outfit in what was their first game of the summer and first since a disappointing Six Nations campaign.

They conceded seven tries in total, most of which Murray believes were avoidable, and spurned chances early in the first half when the game was still in the balance.

“It was a disappointing performance,” stated Murray.

“We gave away too many soft tries. We were too passive at times and gave them too many easy points. Not much we can take from the game in all honesty.”

Despite dominating possession in the first half, Murray believes that Scotland were far too porous in defence and failed to recover from a slow start.

“There’s things we can fix but we look at things, we can analyse, we can prepare and then it’s frustrating that we make errors,” he said.

“We spoke about fronting up with the players that we have and we didn’t do that in the first half, especially for an international Six Nations game.

“It’s difficult to recover when you let Wales in like that.”

He was, however, delighted with the performance of debutants Kerr Johnston and Liam McConnell, both of whom were selected on the back of stellar performances in the U18s Six Nations festival earlier this year.

Flanker McConnell was industrious in defence, while Johnston’s threat in attack was one of the more pleasing aspects of the team’s performance according to Murray.

“Kerr and Liam were sensational,” said Murray.

“I thought they were probably our best players. Kerr showed the drive in attack that we wanted to see. I said afterwards to the boys that we needed to see more of that.”

Murray’s side return to action – and Benetton’s Stadio Di Monigo – on Thursday when they play hosts Italy.

Italy won 27-13 at the same venue when the pair met in March.