Scots try, try and try again to win at last
Scotland’s trio of tries secures 17-0 victory against Italians
ITALY 0 SCOTLAND 17
The first phase of Gregor Townsend saving his job was completed in Rome yesterday.
But if this is the way Scotland are going to go about things, it was a Pyrrhic victory.
Yes, Scotland scored their first tries of the Championship and, yes, they broke their sixgame winless streak.
The game was brutal to watch, though, with skipper Stuart Hogg’s brilliant individual try the only moment that will linger in the memory.
Townsend had picked a team not to win, but not to lose. That’s exactly the way they played.
The coach himself admitted: “We know we can be better than we showed today in attack.
“Maybe that was partly the fixture, knowing how important it was for us as a team. But we have to be better next time and let’s hope the confidence this win gives us means we can attack the last two games playing our best.”
It was turgid stuff with the gameplan – in conditions perfect for attacking, running rugby – seemingly to totally ignore the wingers, both of whom have scored in abundance in earlier, more-expansive times.
Indeed, both Sean Maitland and Blair Kinghorn started coming off their wings into the midfield looking for work having tired of waiting in the wings for a ball that never came.
It was entirely fitting that Hogg should end the try drought, as he more than anyone was responsible for it after dropping the ball in Dublin.
And it was vintage Hoggy in the 23rd minute when an aimless Italian clearance made its way to him and he showed all his tricks to hitch-kick, jink, dummy and sidestep his way to the line.
You could see how much it meant to him as he thumped his chest and roared after grounding the ball.
The skipper said: “It’s very pleasing. There’s a lot of method in the madness and that’s when myself and the back-three come alive, when we come up against an unstructured defence.”
The second score was perhaps more heartening as Scotland, at long last, showed they can string the phases together – 16 of them on this occasion – and finally work their way over the line. Chris Harris claiming the touchdown with what seemed to me to be his first touch of the ball.
The Azzurris’ chances of staging a late fightback weren’t helped by replacement hooker Federico Zani being sinbinned for the final 10 minutes for dumping fellow sub Grant Gilchrist on his face.
Adam Hastings made sure of the win with a minute to run when he picked the ball up from the back of a ruck and jogged unmolested under the posts, from where even he couldn’t miss the conversion.
I say that because he’d missed his three previous attempts, the first being a shocker from in front of the posts.
The fact he was kicking it at all was perhaps indicative of a lack of confidence that the Scots could actually get over the line as they’d botched a spell of pressure and took the apparently safe option of kicking three points instead of going for five – only for Hastings to screw the ball wide.
Hastings is prone to the occasional bad day at the office and this was one of those. His kicking from hand was wayward, his placekicking poor and he ended up running about like a headless chicken trying to sort things out.
To be fair, the scoreline could have been more flattering as Ali Price thought he’d scored, only for the ref to rule it out for a forward pass, and Jamie Ritchie just couldn’t hold on to the ball as he crashed towards the whitewash just after the restart.
Italy, it has to be said, were poor. Scotland’s defence is much improved but this, their 25th Six Nations game on the trot without a win, was the second game of the tourney in which they’ve been nilled.
That said, they were more entertaining to watch than stodgy Scotland.
ITALY – Hayward; Bellini, Morisi, Canna, Minozzi; Allan (Bisegni 74), Braley (Palazzani 59); Lovotti (Fischetti 59), Bigi (Capt)(zani 60), Zilocchi (Riccioni 30)(Zilocchi 54), Zanni (Budd 44), Cannone (Lazzaroni 68), Polledri, Negri (Licata 44), Steyn. SCOTLAND – Hogg (Capt), Maitland (Mcguigan 68), Harris (Hutchinson 60), Johnson, Kinghorn; Hastings, Price (Horne 55); Sutherland (Dell 55), Mcinally (Brown 60), Z. Fagerson (Nel 55), Toolis, Cummings (Gilchrist 68), Ritchie, Watson, Bradbury (M. Fagerson 55).