Howley: Every chance of a win for Cotter’s men at Twickenham

HEAD coach Rob Howley bemoaned the sloppiness which led to Wales’ first defeat at Murrayfield for 10 years but said Vern Cotter’s team had all the “ingredients” to overcome England at Twickenham in a fortnight to complete the Triple Crown.

The Welsh held a 13-9 lead when they went in at half-time – although Howley felt it should have been 16-6 – but faded in the second period when their thrusts often only led to them presenting turnover ball to Vern Cotter’s side or being penalised by Irish referee John Lacey.

To compound matters, they surrendered what Howley felt were two “soft” Scottish tries during the second period, while captain Alun Wyn Jones suffered the ignominy of being overruled by kicker Leigh Halfpenny early in the second half as they stood over a penalty which could have brought them back level at 16-16. Instead, for the second Six Nations match running Wales failed to score a single second-half point and their hopes of winning the championship are as good as over.

“They [Scotland] have got every chance [of beating England], haven’t they?” said Howley, who will also be attack coach for the British & Irish Lions on their summer tour of New Zealand.

“In the contact area, they came out on top against us, especially second half. They have individual runners, the likes of Stuart Hogg, and I think that aerially, they kept hold of the ball. It is something which we pride ourselves on, winning the aerial battle.

But whether it was Tommy Seymour on one side or Tim Visser, they put us under pressure from a tactical perspective. I am sure with the two wingers that is something they will look to do against England and Finn Russell’s kicking game was pretty accurate today. They have certainly got ingredients there that will make them competitive.

“From our perspective after the intensity and the accuracy which we had against England two weeks ago, we were way off that mark, particularly in the second half.

“We were quite dominant in the first half but we weren’t clinical. Then we made it a little bit easier in the second half for Scotland because we turned the ball over too many times. Obviously, Jonathan Davies went through for us, and there were other opportunities as well, but international rugby is about keeping hold of the ball.

“Scotland were very clinical in their attacks. They scored two tries, two soft tries really, because they got to the outside edge.”

Wyn Jones admitted he had been left rather red faced over that strange second-half penalty incident which appeared to be well within his full-back’s kicking orbit. Forced to kick for position, Wyn Jones was then penalised from the resulting line-out and Scotland sighed with relief.

“I would have liked to [kick it],” said Wyn Jones, who praised the contribution of Scotland back-row substitute Hamish Watson. “But the kickers didn’t want to so that was that. Then I got done for blocking in the back in the line-out.”