Nelson left frustrated by soft tries against Italy
Scotland captain annoyed by costly naive mistakes
IT IS not hard to pinpoint the things that Scotland will need to do if they are to beat Wales in Saturday’s Wooden Spoon decider at Scotstoun. All the things they failed to do against Italy, that’s what.
Bryan Easson’s team went into the Women’s Six Nations match two days ago convinced their preparation had been good, confident they were fitter than ever as a squad, and more than hopeful that they would have an advantage in the scrum and line-out.
Their fitness held up, all right, but the expected edge in the scrum did not materialise, and they showed precious little confidence as the Italians swept to a 41-20 victory.
After a tentative start to the match away to England two weeks previously, the head coach had emphasised the need to get off to a bright beginning at home to Italy. That, too, failed to materialise, as the Italians scored the first two of their eventual seven tries in the opening stages of the game.
One positive sign was the fact that the 20 points the home side scored was their highest tally in a Six Nations match for more than a decade. The tries by Lana Skeldon and Emma Wassell came from lineout drives, and captain Helen Nelson converted both and added two penalties.
But while those two instances showed that Scotland did get the better of the set-piece on occasion, at other times they were under serious pressure, and never looked secure on their own ball.
More crucially, whatever went right in attack was heavily outweighed by what went wrong in defence, as Nelson accepted.
“I just feel at times we’re shooting ourselves in the foot,” the centre said. “We’re working hard, but it’s just quite naive mistakes that are putting us on the back foot, and at this level teams will take advantage of that and score points against us. We just let in a number of soft tries that you just can’t get away with at this level.
“I think we were very well prepared for this game. We were putting a big emphasis on those first 20 minutes. I don’t know if it’s nerves, a couple of younger players in the team . . .
“Maybe we were a bit tentative. That’s something we have to look long and hard at this week, and it’s something we need to put right, because we’re letting too many soft tries in in the first few minutes. You can’t afford that.
When asked how much credit should go to Italy for a result which takes them into a thirdplace play-off against Ireland, Nelson said: “They were good. As always, their handling and off-loads were very good, and as soon as you let them get past the gainline they’re a hard team to stop. Credit to them, they were clinical, but there are things that we can work on to stop that.
“We do have it in us, that’s the most frustrating thing. We do have an 80-minute performance in us, we just haven’t seen it in this tournament. I do truly believe that if we go out and play like we know we can then we can beat teams like Italy.”
Beating teams like Italy can wait, at least until the World Cup qualifiers, now expected to take place in September. Beating teams such as Wales is the immediate priority.
The Welsh have had an even worse Six Nations than Scotland, having lost 53-0 to France, then 45-0 to Ireland. But they have gone into matches against Scotland as underdogs before only to win thanks to greater resilience and self-belief, so they should not be written off.
The lack of confidence in the Scotland squad is understandable given the absence of key players such as the injured Rachel Malcolm and her fellow-forwards Jade Konkel and Sarah Bonar, both of whom are unavailable because of work commitments. But neither Nelson nor Easson sought to use the missing trio as an excuse for Saturday’s under-performance.
The captain and coach know that the players who are available can play far better than they did against Italy. They will just have to find a way of persuading them to do so against the Welsh.
I just feel at times we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. I don’t know if it’s nerves