Doddie’s Army brings Rome to a standstill ahead of a great escape
ITALY 27 SCOTLAND 29
The pipe bands should have been playing the theme from The Great Escape at the end of this nerve-shredding encounter.
After finally going ahead with just 10 minutes left of an error-strewn afternoon for Gregor Townsend’s troops, Johnny Gray coughed up a dumb penalty that looked to have given Italy a deserved and famous win.
But the Azzurri returned the favour by collapsing a Scots maul with barely two minutes left on the clock and Greig Laidlaw – who’d already kicked three conversions - kept his cool to slot what proved to be the winning three-pointer.
Before the game, more than 5000 travelling fans had brought Rome’s streets to a standstill as they marched to the Stadio Olimpico in support of Scotland legend Doddie Weir and his battle with motor neurone disease.
It was five times the number the Roman police were expecting and they had to stop traffic – and even the trams – to let the massed ranks pass.
Townsend had said passing them in the team bus had had a “big effect” on his men, but it didn’t turn out to be a positive one.
Instead it was Italy who roared out of the traps to build what at one stage was a 12-point lead while Scotland looked oddly out of sorts.
They huffed and puffed to no great effect, didn’t look after the ball well at all and their handling was woeful.
Worse, it was a more than a passing imitation of the headless chicken show we saw on opening day in Cardiff, especially when Italy scored immediately after half-time and Scotland started needlessly chasing the game and forcing passes, that simply weren’t on, when they still had more than half-an-hour to sort things out.
It’s no wonder half the home team were in tears at the end. Partly they were tears of disbelief that Scotland had somehow salvaged a four-try bonus-point win, and partly because they had equalled the record of 17 championship games lost on the trot set by France in the Edwardian era.
They’d played with courage and accuracy, and for most of this very even game it looked like man of the match Tommy Allan was going to inspire Italy to victory over his father’s homeland.
The Scots-qualified fly-half was instrumental in Italy scoring twice in five first-half minutes, as first he sold Huw Jones a cute dummy to cut inside him to score, then poked a neat grubber through Scotland’s defence for Matteo Minozzi to dive on.
Just after the interval Ryan Wilson’s missed tackle saw Jake Poledri cut through the midfield and put Allan in unopposed for his brace.
Not usually a reliable kicker, he maintained a 100% record with three conversions and two penalties and must have thought his late kick had settled the result.
But Scotland, for all they were far from at their best, didn’t give up and had actually scored with their first bit of possession, though it was no contender for try of the season.
Nick Grigg, who impressed in both attack and defence, made the initial break and from the base of the ruck and flanker Hamish Watson flung a laboured pass that bounced twice before Fraser Brown gathered it and flopped over the whitewash.
The Dark Blues had lost two lineouts on their own throw-in in the first quarter, but their second try came when they secured one just short of the Italian five-metre line and, eventuall,y rumbled the maul over the line with John Barclay claiming the score.
In the second 40, once they’d composed themselves, another lineout drive was stopped just short and Laidlaw spun a long pass out to the waiting Sean Maitland, who wrongfooted his marker to scamper over.
They belatedly went ahead 10 minutes from time when Stuart Hogg finally broke his duck for this championship when he cantered in after a Scots maul had made fully 25 metres.
That had the Scots in the cauldron-like Stadio on their feet, but they still had the penalty ping-pong to endure before the final whistle brought some blessed relief.
Scotland – Hogg; Seymour, Jones (Horne 53), Grigg, Maitland; Russell (Price 54), Laidlaw; Reid (Bhatti 41), Brown (Mcinally 41), Nel (Fagerson 41), Swinson (R. Gray 53), J. Gray, Barclay (Capt.), Watson, Wilson (Denton 67). Unused replacement – Kinghorn.