Frustration was the name of this game
THE thickness of a lick of paint and we were home and hosed.
That was Scotland skipper Greig Laidlaw’s lament after his attempted conversion of Johnny Gray’s second-half try cannoned back off the upright and left the Scots, once again, on the wrong side of a one-point game against the Wallabies.
This one might not be as hard to take as that in last autumn’s World Cup quarter-final. But it is still frustrating as the Aussies led for just five minutes of this wonderfully entertaining match.
The trouble is, they were the last five minutes.
Up until then, Scotland looked like ripping up the script.
The Wallabies are battlehardened after the Rugby Championship and thrashed Wales last weekend.
Scotland were playing their first Test of the season, with four players making their first starts and had a front row with half the cap tally of their opposite numbers – all but one of them belonging to cap centurion Ross Ford.
So the result was a foregone conclusion, right? Wrong. From the first whistle the Scots were in the Aussie’s faces. While Wales sat off and let the Wallaby backs weave pretty patterns, Vern Cotter’s men disrupted the men in gold so much they were bedevilled by knockons and crossing infringements.
The disruptors-in-chief were the centre pairing of Alex Dunbar and Huw Jones.
Jones, winning his second cap after a cameo on the Japan tour, was sensational.
He’s been on fire with the Stormers in South Africa and his man-of-the-match display saw him score two tries, the first coming from Finn Russell’s cute dink over the very flat Aussie defensive line which gave Jones a clear gallop under the posts and the second arriving 15 minutes later when he scampered over after the Scots had worked their way up the left flank.
The only blip of a first half they ended 17-10 to the good came when the Wallabies’ backs turned on the style with a wellworked move that discombobulated the Scots’ defence and allowed Hodge to dot down for a try that Foley converted.
The Scots extended their lead when Johnny Gray ploughed over the line under a guddle of bodies for a try given on the say-so of the TMO, but then Laidlaw had his uncharacter-istic bout of the yips.
Australia were expected to target the Scots’ rookie front row but they mostly held their own in the scrums, though those at the coalface were overshadowed by their colleagues in the back row.
Despite the disruption of losing Ryan Wilson to an ankle injury early on and then having his replacement, John Hardie, forced off, leaving them with lock Grant Gilchrist packing down at blindside flanker, they were extremely effective against a world-class Wallaby unit.
John Barclay showed the class that makes his two-year exile from the squad baffling.
Australia played most of the last 10 minutes a man down after replacement Skelton was sin-binned for trying to squash
Johnny Gray in a ruck, but they got the vital try when Kuridrani was brought to ground but reached behind him to ground the ball.
Foley’s conversion put them ahead for the first time in the match but the Scots can feel aggrieved as the ref missed a knock-on that would have halted the Aussies’ advance.
Scotland – Hogg; Maitland, Jones, Dunbar (Horne 69), Visser; Russell, Laidlaw (Capt.); Dell (Reid 52), Ford (Brown 56), Fagerson (Low 68), R. Gray (Gilchrist 12-19), J. Gray, Barclay, Watson, Wilson (Hardie 5 (Gilchrist 62)). Unused replacements – Price, Hughes.
Australia – Folau; Haylett-Petty, Kuridrani, Hodge, Speight; Foley, Genia (Phipps 68); Sio (Robertson 73), Moore (Capt.), Kepu (Alaalatoa 62), Arnold (Mumm 48), Coleman (Simmons 5), Pocock, Hooper, Timani (Skelton 62). Unused replacements – Latu, Cooper.