Townsend looks for positives in Scotland’s shock defeat in US

Gregor Townsend admits Scotland’s surprise defeat to the USA has taught him more about his players and how they deal with adversity.

Townsend, who gave seven players their first Test starts as he made wholesale changes to the side that thrashed Canada 48-10, said the performance served as a lesson to him.

He also admitted they need to be “much better”.

Townsend said: “We wanted to learn about players on this tour, we certainly wanted to give players opportunities to play.

“Maybe we could have had more off the bench and had more experienced players but sometimes you don’t get the guys off the bench that early or get injuries elsewhere.

“We will know more about the players and how they handle adversity away from home against a team that were fired up, especially in the second half.

“It is not good news but at least we came out of here knowing that. We need to be much better.”

Townsend added: “We did not win some of the collisions. The hooker (Tuafete’e) got through a number of tackles, those are areas that are disappointing.

“Their key players stood out for them and gave them that confidence that they could get back in the game, they did get back into the game pretty quickly in that second half.

“Sometimes we put some really good hits in but did not complete the tackle.”

Scotland now head south to take on Argentina at the Estadio Centenario in Resistencia next Saturday.

It is the final match of their summer tour and Townsend admits they will need to improve significantly against a Pumas side wounded by back-to-back home defeats to Wales.

“It (defeat to USA) is a huge downer. If it was the last game on tour, we would be even more disappointed but we have one more game and we have a tougher opponent who have lost two games and will be fired up,” he said.

“We will have to be much better next week but can right a lot of wrongs with a winning performance.

“We will look at how the players got on in terms of their improvement, what they were doing in training. We will look at the games – we have had almost everyone playing in the first two games.

“We strived to get wins in those games but individually we will know a lot more about the players and whether they can get back into the squad in November and whether they are realistic options for us in Japan (2019 World Cup).”

Stuart Hogg, who was captaining Scotland for the first time, admitted that “everyone is bitterly disappointed.”

He said: “We worked incredibly hard during the week to get ourselves into good places but come up short.

“As Gregor said, a lot of mistakes by us allowed the Americans to get into the game. That was really frustrating.

“It is one thing making a mistake, it is another making two with the snowball effect that comes after that.

“The majority of their points came from our errors. It is all about momentum shifts and taking opportunities and, credit to USA because they did exactly

Their key players stood out for them and gave them that confidence that they could get back in the game..We have to much better next week. GREGOR TOWNSEND

that. We didn’t work hard enough to get into our shape.”

USA coach Gary Gold was more pleased his his side’s performance than the result itself.

“The character that was shown by this group of players was immense,” he said.

“I know you won’t believe this is the truth but winning or losing was not our priority, but I wanted to see how far we could progress when we play against world-class opposition.

“At 24-13 down at half-time with three pretty soft tries and teams could have capitulated but we hung in there.

“Even if they had kicked the conversion at the end I would not feel different than I do now, it is good to know we have such a wonderful group of players.”