The same old story as another one gets away from Scotland
SCOTLAND will be kicking themselves. They had a glorious chance to secure their first victory in Dublin for a decade. Yet, in the end, they let it slip away. They were excellent in the first half and played some of the best rugby we’ve seen from them all year. But, on the scoreboard, they let Ireland off the hook.
Despite Scotland dominating the opening 40 minutes in near enough every area, Ireland somehow found themselves 11-9 ahead at the break.
The yellow card shown to Duncan Taylor was a huge turning point — and I can understand why some people possibly looked at it as a harsh decision.
But I wasn’t surprised he was sent to the sin bin for a deliberate knockon. Away from home, those are the sort of decisions which will go against you nine times out of 10.
You need to be a little bit smarter in terms of how you go about things. Don’t give the referee a decision to make. It’s a shame because Taylor actually played well overall.
The second half was chalk and cheese from what Scotland had in the first half. To lose 31-16 in the end, you have to say it was a bit of a collapse.
It was a Jekyll and Hyde display — and it shows that this Scotland team are still a long way from being the finished article.
They just couldn’t handle what Ireland threw at them physically in the second half — and that’s the box we still need to tick heading into next year’s Six Nations.
Ireland just squeezed the game and wrestled us into submission. It was actually quite depressing watching it because you could see exactly what was happening.
Ireland reverted to type more and more as the game wore on. It was a repetitive cycle of keeping the ball, win a penalty, kick to touch, then maul it. But fair play because it got the job done.
Scotland aren’t just rolling over and having our bellies tickled in the way we have done at times in the past. But clearly we’re still not getting the job done away from home.
Listen, the victory in Wales a few weeks ago was great. Nobody can ever take that away from Scotland.
But, if we’re being brutally honest, you have to take that result with a slight pinch of salt. For starters, Wales have looked really out of sorts and out of form this year.
There was also the fact that it was played behind closed doors in Llanelli, rather than in front of the normal 70,000 fans at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff.
Heading into the Six Nations next spring, Scotland will still have question-marks hanging over them in terms of their ability to win away from home.
They need a proper statement victory against one of the big sides away from home — the likes of winning a real ding-dong in front of a full house at Twickenham or the Stade de France.
They will face home games against Ireland and Wales in next year’s championship, but it’s the away record which needs to be rectified if they are to have any chance of competing for the title.
Barring the result against Wales,
Scotland haven’t won away from home against the big boys in what you might call a ‘proper’ Six Nations game since 2010.
Our only victories on the road during that period have come against Italy. Gregor Townsend and Stuart Hogg have aspirations of winning the championship, so they know that record needs to change.
Overall I feel Scotland are in a much better place now than they were after the World Cup 12 months ago. There has been clear progress this year.
That being said, our overall depth of talent isn’t quite as strong as the other nations. If you take two worldclass players like Hamish Watson and Finn Russell out, for instance, we don’t have any like-for-like replacements.
Jaco van der Walt played well yesterday and he will certainly offer competition to the likes of Adam Hastings and Duncan Weir, with Russell out in front as our first-choice fly-half.
But it was Duhan van der Merwe who I felt was Scotland’s real shining light yesterday. He is quite simply unplayable at times.
The way in which he scored his try yesterday came from absolutely nothing. He has provided a new injection of X-factor to Scotland and I firmly believe he’ll scored tries by the bucket-load at Test level.
Teams must look at him and think: How on earth do we stop him? He is totally unplayable at times, with the perfect blend of electric pace and brutal power.
He will be a huge player for us heading into the Six Nations next year. But, for Scotland, there was no doubt that this was one that got away against the Irish.