Price counts the cost of individual mistakes
HUW JONES was the first to have a go, only to be tossed aside. Alex Dunbar was next, but found no joy. By the time Blair Kinghorn tried to wrestle George North to the ground, the situation had become irretrievable.
The giant Welsh winger had walloped his way through the Scottish defence, leaving behind a trail of bodies scattered across the turf of the Principality Stadium.
This was a reminder of what North can be: a blaze of destructive brilliance, a battering ram dressed in a red jersey, with a turn of pace that belies his immense physique.
Yet, the frustration for Scotland was just how easy they made it for him to score the opening try of the game. Tellingly, it would not be the last time the men in navy blue would be seen falling off of tackles.
At the end of a sobering afternoon in the Welsh capital, the reality was painfully clear. There will have been some boozed-up revellers who put up more of a fight against Cardiff bouncers than what the Scots managed against their opponents.
In key moments of the game, they were found wanting. Jones was particularly culpable, directly involved in the concession of both Welsh tries.
His missed tackle on North was later compounded when Jonathan Davies swatted him aside with alarming ease, a hand-off putting the Scotland centre on his backside as Davies ran in to score.
Coupled with the fact that they essentially gave Wales a 9-0 headstart through ill-discipline, it felt like such a cheap way for Scotland to lose.
For Ali Price, it was a frustrating opening to the autumn internationals.
Scotland seemed strangely offcolour and subdued in attack. But, faced with players of the quality of North and Davies, the latter being the Lions’ Player of the Series against New Zealand last year, Price knew Scotland simply had to be stronger.
‘Wales were able to take position through our ill-discipline, especially in the first half,’ said the scrum-half. ‘We gifted them the first nine points of the game.
‘I felt like the game was being played largely around the centre of the field. We would then give away a penalty and allow them to score points.
‘They scored a couple of tries off first-phase strikes. The boys will obviously look to address that, but yeah, the tries were obviously a bit soft from our point of view.
‘We were right in the game, but we gave away a couple of cheap tries and the gap was allowed to grow.’
There are good reasons why people remember the New Zealand team of the late 1990s and early millennium. Likewise, the Dutch football team of the 1970s.
The All Blacks had players like Jonah Lomu and Carlos Spencer, while Holland had Johan Cruyff and Johnny Rep. Wonderfully gifted individuals.
But New Zealand did not win a World Cup, losing in the final of 1995 and famously choking against France in the semi-finals of 1999.
For all their talents, Holland lost in the finals of both the 1974 and ’78 World Cups. They never won anything.
This is similar to where Scotland are at just now. They have some incredibly gifted players, real mercurial talents, and are thrilling to watch on their day.
But there is a flaw in their makeup. A soft centre which opponents pounce upon, particularly away from home. Following yesterday’s defeat, Scotland have still not won on their travels against a fellow northern-hemisphere team apart from Italy since 2010.
The cavernous surroundings of the Principality Stadium — one of the great cathedrals of world sport — were hardly the ideal surroundings to alter that statistic, but it did offer Price the chance to settle a personal score.
He was completely out of sorts when Scotland were thrashed here in the Six Nations earlier this year. He showed far greater composure yesterday, though, and played fairly well. ‘Yeah, I suppose there was a little bit of a monkey off my back,’ he admitted. ‘I said to (Scotland skills coach) Mike Blair afterwards that it was the most I had ever thought about a game heading into it. ‘I just wanted to go out,
We gave away a couple of cheap tries and the gap was allowed to grow
do my job and put in a solid performance. Obviously, I wanted the team to win.
‘In terms of the skills I had to execute, compared to the game in the Six Nations, I’m obviously in a much better place.
‘We started the game slowly, but we were still right in the game at half-time. I thought we really grew into it in the second half.
‘We had two tries disallowed. Things just didn’t quite go our way. Little inaccuracies in the final third.
‘On another day, those would have gone our way and we could quite easily have won the game. It’s fine margins.
‘Wales didn’t play a lot. They kicked quite a lot. Maybe the Welsh boys were just a little bit more clinical with their scores.’
Of his half-back partnership with his Glasgow Warriors team-mate Adam Hastings, Price added: ‘I felt Adam grew into the game and we were able to play more in the Welsh 22 as the game progressed.
‘Different games require different ways of playing. With Adam and myself, I’m the more experienced one.
‘You get games which are tight. This wasn’t a Friday night league game. This is Test match rugby.
‘Obviously, we all want to attack and run it from everywhere. But you can’t do that all the time.
‘But I think Adam did well overall. It was his first really big challenge in international rugby and I felt he handled himself well.’