We have to stick to our principles after brutal loss
IT IS the hope that kills you. The expectation that Scotland will perform well and they don’t is almost harder to bear than when you go in thinking you have little chance. I’m learning a lot of what it is to be a supporter, but I know how low the players will be feeling because they knew this was a game they could win.
I can’t remember playing in a game like that before, to be honest, certainly not with the level of expectation that Scotland carried into this Championship. And I am sure they will be like me in that I didn’t see that result coming.
We had promising moments early on with good breaks from Jonny Gray and then Finn Russell and, had we been a bit more accurate in the Wales 22, then we would have had a very different start to the game.
I’d like to think that we would have gone on from that and built, but instead we coughed it up, Wales took an interception chance and then they came back at us and scored quickly with a superb try by Leigh Halfpenny.
From that point on, I had a horrible feeling of what it might have been to be an Australia supporter at Murrayfield in November as your team coughs up ball, makes mistakes and the home side seem to run in scores almost at will. It wasn’t quite like that as Wales scored only four tries — ‘only’ — but their dominance was similar to the way it went for us in the autumn.
Some will question the way we played and there is no doubt that when we were 14-0 behind part of me was thinking we need to tighten up, play for territory and pick off some penalties to get back into the game. But, when I stop and think about it, and ask myself what I’d have done as Scotland captain, I would not have changed anything. I’d have done the same as John Barclay and the boys.
People have asked whether Scotland have a ‘Plan B’ and it is a fair question.
When your ‘Plan A’ has worked as effectively as their’s did in all of last year’s Six Nations games bar the one at Twickenham, you take New Zealand to the wire and stuff Australia in a way we have never done before — and you believe it is a style of game that plays to your strengths and gives you a great chance of success — then why would you change it to revert to a different approach?
In saying that, there is a balance. I know Gregor Townsend will be disappointed with the inaccuracy of his players and the number of mistakes they made.
The challenge we have is that teams know how Scotland are going to play — it’s multiphase, high-percentage risk — and so teams know they will get chances if they work hard in defence.
The key for us, and what we saw for Scotland in the autumn, was that when we make few mistakes and are accurate with our passing and decision-making, the best defences in the world can be opened up. The difference in the autumn was that our accuracy was much better and we made fewer errors.
Our struggles to win the contact phases allowed Aaron Shingler and Josh Navidi to be dominant and get the upper hand, and that gave Wales the platform to perform. If you are attacking in the wide channels, there has to be a breach somewhere to punch through — and we didn’t get that very often.
The challenge for Gregor is how much he changes, if anything. I don’t believe he will change much. He will look to tweak it and he will probably look at whether players like David Denton and Josh Strauss might bring added punch.
Ali Price didn’t have his best game, so does Gregor stick with him or go back to the established player, Greig Laidlaw?
That is a bit reactionary after just one game and the test really is how this bunch of players come back from that major examination, but there are options available to change things.
What the players have found, those that didn’t already know it anyway, is that the Six Nations is a more brutal, intense and pressure-cooker of a competition than anything else we play in as Scots.
Most of these guys do know that, however, after the whitewash of a first Championship under Vern Cotter. But they also know how to rebuild and come back from the depths of disappointment.
This was a brutal reminder that for all the improvements of the last two seasons, they haven’t won anything yet and in Cardiff they were simply not at the races. The brutality of the pressure now is that they need to get a victory on Sunday against France.
Gregor won’t panic. He is clever enough to identify where things went wrong and will make tweaks, but the squad is an honest bunch and they will be brutal in their assessment of each other and where they need to get better.
The good thing is they don’t have to look far for answers. The players have a blueprint from the autumn of how their game works when they execute it well. And we have all been there. Pro sportsmen and women have all suffered defeat and you learn how to pick yourself up because you have to put yourself back in that arena and test yourself again. There is no other option.
At Murrayfield they have produced their best rugby. The crowd will be in strong voice on Sunday and the energy and vibrancy that came to life when the All Blacks visited, and when the Wallabies pitched up, is special. We need that again now to revive the hope.