Oops! Captain Hogg has a Dublin calamity
Scotland began their Six Nations campaign with a 19-12 defeat against Ireland in Dublin. But it could have been oh-so-different had skipper Stuart Hogg not dropped the ball when a try seemed certain.
IRELAND 19 SCOTLAND 12
Stuart Hogg will remember his first game as Scotland’s Six Nations skipper – but not favourably.
The game was finely poised when smart work and handling saw the ball delivered to the full-back’s hands, and all he had to do was dot the ball down in the left-hand corner.
But he was far too casual and simply dropped the ball as he stooped to ground it, and Scotland’s best chance of a try in a game they could have won was blown.
Hogg held his hands up, saying: “It was a schoolboy error. I’m gutted with what happened. I’ve apologised to the boys.
“It’s bitterly disappointing to drop the ball over the line but we got ourselves into some good positions there.”
That they did, paying at least half-a-dozen visits to the Irish five-metre line as they gave as good as they got in the Aviva Stadium. Gone was the abject no-show when they played the same opponents at the World Cup.
In its place was a dogged determination to go toe-to-toe but whenever the tryline was in sight, either a Scottish error, a careless penalty or streetwise Irish work at the breakdown saw them fail to turn pressure and territory into points.
Gregor Townsend certainly felt French ref Mathieu Raynal let Ireland away with murder at the breakdown, saying: “I thought we were unlucky, whether it was players in green jerseys with hands on the ground not supporting their own bodyweight, ripping the ball as players went to their knees.
“I’m really frustrated with the one at the end of the game because I was watching phase after phase and it didn’t look like many players were behind the tryline, and that was the offside line.
“But we have to be better than the decisions we were maybe getting on the field and take those opportunities.”
This was a different Scotland. The coaching team acknowledge they got things wrong in Japan and that the all-singing, alldancing style simply wasn’t working.
This was far more pragmatic and, while that obviously meant it was less flashy, it was still absorbing stuff as they were never out of the game.
The Scots’ backline, even shorn of Finn Russell, boasts as good an array of attacking talent as they’ve had in the professional era but they just couldn’t unleash it to its full extent.
Speaking of Russell, we really shouldn’t be as Adam Hastings had a fine game.
He’s from the same mould but actually offers more with the boot from both the tee and the hand, the latter increasingly important as the kicking game becomes ever-more vital in today’s rugby.
Indeed, Hastings scored all of Scotland’s points with four confidently-struck penalties, just as his opposite number Johnny Sexton scored all of his side’s with a try, conversion and four three-pointers of his own.
The try came when Ireland found it all too easy to create a yawning gap in Scotland’s defence, through which Johnny Sexton galloped unimpeded.
It looked as if – unsurprisingly – Scotland’s new defence coach Steve Tandy hadn’t managed to work miracles in plugging a porous defence in the mere month he’d been in post though the new emphasis on a pressing defence improved immeasurably as the game went on.
His fellow newbie coach, scrum specialist Pieter de Villiers, also influenced proceedings as the pack – the heaviest ever fielded in dark blue – were at least on a par with their Lions-laden opposite eight and won a couple of scrum penalties.
The Dark Blues were posing sufficient threat to the keep the normally cocky Aviva crowd quiet but Hoggy’s horror show – fluffing the rugby equivalent of an open goal – dealt a hammer blow to their hopes of a first Dublin win in a decade.