Another chance to get things right
Scotland Women head coach Bryan Easson has handed the players who came up short against Italy in Monday’s World Cup qualifying campaign opener the chance to redeem themselves when they take on Spain this evening, writes
DAVID BARNES.
The only change to the starting XV for this must-win clash is in the second-row where Sarah Bonar drops out due to work commitments with the RAF, meaning Louise McMillan shifts forward from the back to the middle row of the scrum, and Rachel McLachlan is promoted from the bench to start at openside flanker.
“Louise played in the secondrow during the Six Nations anyway, so we’ve no real concerns with that,” said Easson. “It is an enforced change, but we knew it was coming and we are dealing with players we have worked with for a while now, so it has been pretty smooth.
“The girls have been very good on and off the field this week,” he added. “With a sixday turnaround, we have done a couple of short training sessions and then been very honest with each other in how we’ve reviewed the Ireland match.
“We’re aware that during a short spell during the first half we compounded errors and that cost us. We had two lineout overthrows, kicked straight out from the restart, made two defensive errors, and from 7-3 inside their 22 and pressing we went to 19-3 in the space of six minutes.
“So, we know we can fix things and because of the players we have we decided: let’s go again and give the girls a chance to put things right against Spain.”
Spain set the cat amongst the pigeons with a surprise win over Ireland in their opening game, but Scotland will draw confidence from having won 12-36 the last time these two sides met back in January 2020.
“We understand that they are on the back of a victory, and we all know how winning breeds winning,” concluded Easson. “They’ll be feeling confident, so we’ve got to make sure that we start well and make right the wrongs from last week.”