Barclay shows true leadership as Scotland end 10-year drought

SCOTLAND ended a 10-year drought with an emphatic win against Wales at Murrayfield yesterday.

It may have been a while coming but the manner of victory, particularly the performance in the second half, was heart-warming and a fitting way for John Barclay to celebrate his first outing as Scotland captain.

The Scots did not have it all their own way, however. The first half was a stop-start affair where the visitors dominated the break-down and the defensive pressure that they put on Scotland forced a number of turnovers and penalties.

As they did against France, Scotland attacked in the narrow channels and, shorn of powerful ball carriers like Josh Strauss, they weren’t that effective against a very aggressive Welsh defence.

But, despite conceding the only try in the first half, Scotland kept themselves in the game through three penalties, the last on the stroke of half-time, which narrowed the gap on the scoreboard to only four points.

When Tommy Seymour scored very early in the second half and Finn Russell converted, Scotland found themselves in the lead by three points and it was a lead that they were not about to give up.

The Welsh did not help themselves. There were lots of little niggles and backchat to the referee – sometimes winning them favour. Tim Visser was quite wrongly penalised for a challenge on Dan Biggar, who simply remonstrated with the referee rather than getting on with the game.

Yet, in the long term, the referee turned more in Scotland’s favour – a scrum penalty to the home side on a Welsh put in, maybe an indicator that he was fed up with the chatter.

It wasn’t Mr Lacey’s finest game – he should have put Tipuric in the sin-bin for a tip tackle on Russell in the second half, when perhaps Russell did not object enough.

It was Scotland who were more creative and, in Russell and Stuart Hogg, they had an axis that was far superior to the more experienced Welsh side. Hogg’s pass to put Tim Visser in to score was quite sublime but Russell had fed the ball to Hogg with pin-point accuracy seconds earlier.

It summed up the second half that Scotland dominated and, when they closed down the match with ease, everyone would have been left wondering why we haven’t seen more performances like this one.

This Scotland team have the makings of being a great side. Barclay’s leadership was quite outstanding and he could easily have been Man of the Match for his efforts. It’s slightly bizarre that it has taken him this long to captain the side as he seems a very natural fit in the role, doing it in his own way. It all augers well for the next match at Twickenham.