Man-of-the-match says he could have done more
NOT content with a man-of-the-match performance, which included two tries and an eight out of nine return from the kicking tee, Scotland standoff Adam Hastings reckons he should have picked-up a few more points during the 61-0 demolition of Russia.
“It was really pleasing – I wasn’t aware of it being our second biggest win – but I probably should have had a few more points too, if I am honest,” he said. “We are not getting ahead of ourselves. There are still things we can do so much better.
“I was so happy with how it worked out. We spoke about being patient against the Russians. We knew we needed a bonus point, but we couldn’t pushittooearly.Weneededaperformance. We kicked to the corners really well and I thought George and Pete [Horne] kicked well, too.
“There was a lot of pressure on us tonight, but then there’s always pressure in every game you play for Scotland, especially in a World Cup. It needed a quality team performance and that’s what we delivered.
“We wanted to put on a mature performance and show we can run the ball. In the first 20 minutes, I think we showed that maturity and then we were able to kick on.”
The victory means Scotland must now defeat Japan by four clear points on Sunday to make the last eight. Finn Russell will almost certainly resume in the Scotland No.10 jersey, but Hastings is likely to feature off the bench, as he did against Samoa.
“We have done some homework already, we know that this win sets up Sunday to be a huge occasion,” said Hastings. “We’ll rest up and then hopefully deliver our ‘A’ game. It’s going to be a tough environment to play in. You want to be under pressure when you play, and we will be on Sunday. They will have so much support but that won’t daunt us.”
Hastings’ half-back partner was George Horne, who was also making his first start of the tournament, and he marked the occasion with a hattrick of tries. It is the first hat-trick in a Test match by a Scottish scrum-half.
“It was pretty cool – very special – I love scoring tries and I love winning games,” he beamed. “To get a hat-trick was fantastic. There have been a lot of great scrum-halves over the years for Scotland and if that is true it will be really special.
“It was good to impact on the team positively. I could have had a fourth and I was pretty gutted when that was disallowed [because of a forward pass from Magnus Bradbury during the lead-up] but the game was in the bag by then.
“The biggest positive was another shut out. That was massive. We base our game on defence. If we can do that against Japan, there is no reason why we can’t beat them by the four points we need.”