Fans’ faces prove Scots’ inspiration

Ireland loss shown to youngsters ‘tugged on heartstrings’ of squad

A video showing the reaction of young Scottish fans to the team’s loss to Ireland at rugby clubs across Scotland “tugged on the heartstrings” and was inspiration to the squad in Japan before their restorative victory over Samoa.

The team were shown the video, compiled by the SRU’s social media unit with film from the North Berwick and Broughton clubs and photographs from eight others including Kirkcaldy RFC, on Saturday, two days before they played Samoa in Kobe.

The film was part of the initiative Everyone’s Game, which was aimed at getting fans down to clubs to watch the games in the morning in Scotland, but it turned out to have a secondary use when shown to the entire squad.

“It was just to show the boys all the rugby clubs back home, just to show what it meant to them,” said assistant coach Matt Taylor. “It really showed the boys all the support we have back home. It was a good reminder and tugged on the heartstrings a bit.

“It showed a lot of young kids, and probably a lot of the boys in the national team were thinking that was like them 10-15-20 years ago. It was just a reminder that there’s a lot of people pulling for us back home, and how much it means.”

George Horne, likely to start against Russia in the next game, said that it reminded him of being “down the Howe with all my mates and my mum and dad” when he was a junior at the Cupar club.

“It was nice to know that the supporters are up early in the morning down in the local clubs, it’s tough with the time difference, you can feel isolated from it all from back home,” he said.

“It shows the buzz is not just over here, it’s back home as well.

“It made me realise how much it means to people back home when you get this responsibility, that we needed to improve our performance from last week and go out and make ourselves and everyone back home proud.”

Scotland have a long eight days before they face the Russians in Shizuoka, which they will spend mostly in Kobe before moving along the coast at the weekend, and Taylor said they had already done due diligence on their pool minnows.

“You don’t really want to be looking too much towards Japan and not do a good job on Russia,” said the coach. “Japan will mean nothing unless we get the Russia job done.

“It’s a balancing act and we just need to make sure we nail it. There will be certain strategies for Japan which may be similar to Russia, but we have to manage two games.

“We’ve got to plan our tactics and make sure we do a professional job going into Russia. Then three or four days later, with not much physical training, then go into Japan.”

The Russians had shown huge improvement from their warm-up games – when they lost to PRO14 side Connacht and to English Championship team Jersey – in the tournament already, he added.

“You look at Fiji against Uruguay, we’re not going to take anyone lightly,” he said. “You look at how they performed against Japan and Samoa, for two-thirds of those games, they were competitive.

“They’re big physical guys and we have to match their physicality, the teams that have won the game I’ve watched have also won the physicality battles.

“We have to make sure we respond like we did against Samoa and that’s a benchmark now, we can’t be going backwards to how we went against Ireland.

“Every game we play in is a knockout game from here on in, so physicality is number one. Execution is important, but if you don’t show up with the same mindset and physicality then the execution part doesn’t even come into play.”

It made me realise how much it means to people back home. GEORGE HORNE