Shellshocked
Stunned Barclay demanding rapid improvement
JOHN BARCLAY admits his side need to learn harsh lessons — and fast — from their heavy defeat to Wales to have any chance of getting their Six Nations campaign back on track.
He does not think all is lost after the opening-day defeat but believes there has to be a huge improvement to have any chance of beating France at Murrayfield next Sunday.
Barclay admitted he was so gutted at the manner of the defeat, he was struggling to talk about it in the immediate aftermath.
‘It’s hard to speak after a defeat like that,’ said the Scotland captain. ‘It’s pretty raw.
‘We have to look at it and decide where we went wrong and turn it around. A lot of these things have to be fixed off the pitch, before we get on with preparing for the match against France.
‘Did we do everything we should have done? We are a straight bunch of guys, everyone is honest, no one is going to hide behind anything.
‘We have to learn from today and we will. We 100-per-cent came down here wanting to win and it would have been fantastic to do that.
‘The flip side of that is that it is not the end of the championship for us. We have four more games and we have to kick on and learn from what we did wrong against Wales — and get it right against France.’
He admitted his team didn’t deserve to take anything out of the game after such a poor display.
‘That performance was not very good for a start,’ he said. ‘We didn’t defend well. Then, when we had the ball we didn’t look after it well and our line-out creaked a little bit.
‘When you don’t do those three things very well you are not going to win and we got beat comfortably in the end.’
Barclay said that being 14-0 down after 12 minutes didn’t dent the confidence too much.
‘It was not the ideal start but at that stage everyone was relaxed,’ he said.
‘It was an intercept for the first one and then another error by us and they had two tries out of nothing.
‘We weren’t panicking, we had had a bit of ball but we just couldn’t seem to exert any pressure.
‘We believed we could come back into the game because at half-time it was 14-0 and we were still in it. But then we just couldn’t get our attack functioning in the second half and it’s not clear to me at this stage why it didn’t work.’ Barclay said having ten of his Scarlets team-mates in the Welsh starting XV had given them an advantage because they knew each other so well. He said: ‘The fact that all of Wales’ points came from Scarlets players showed their influence on the proceedings. ‘They ended up playing a lot like Scarlets,’ said the man who has spent the last four years at the Llanelli club. ‘That was part of the difference. ‘Credit to Wales — they scored some good tries, like the Scarlets do, but we looked at ourselves and we didn’t perform anywhere near how we did in the last game against Australia in November.’ Stuart McInally said the defeat to Wales had been a ‘bitter pill to swallow’ as he agreed with his captain that the team had travelled to Wales confident of victory.
He defended the mindset of the Scotland players and denied they were not focused enough in the early stages of the match.
‘We are disappointed with that,’ said the Scotland hooker.
‘We spoke so much during the week about coming down here to win, so that final score is a bitter pill to swallow. Look, we have been in games before when we have conceded early and it has been all very calm afterwards.
‘For instance in one of the autumn games Finn said: “That was our doing, not a problem, let’s just get into us”. That’s what we do — and the mindset was right from the start against Wales.’
McInally said it was individual errors that could have occurred at any time in the game that cost his team the early tries.
Although he did not name names, it was clear that Ali Price’s telegraphed pass that was picked off by Gareth Davies after just five minutes was one of the errors he was referring to.
‘A lot of the points they scored came from our errors,’ said the front-row forward.
‘We need to look at ourselves and get better. That start was hugely disappointing, being down 14-0 after 12 minutes, especially as the two tries they got were two errors.
‘They didn’t have to work too hard for those tries.
‘Then we gave away two early penalties in the second half and suddenly we were 20-0 down.
‘With them having a kicker of the quality of Leigh Halfpenny we were always going to be punished.
‘We didn’t help ourselves with too many basic mistakes but we can improve and get better going into the France game.’