Game was there to be won but we just came up short, admits Watson

THERE for the taking. All it needed was a little care and attention. A touch more precision. The ability to reach out a bruised and battered claw, grab hold of the ball — and hang on for dear life. Or grim death.

Beaten black and bleu by a bunch of beastly brutes, their senses swimming from collision after collision, Scotland almost got the victory their bravery deserved in the Stade de France. Almost? You could learn to hate that word.

Close enough to get a losing bonus point, some consolation for yet another narrow defeat at this venue, Vern Cotter left Paris with his squad exhausted, depleted, down to the gristle on the bare bones.

And nursing a sense of grievance over their own minor failings.

Quite apart from the knocks, bumps, lumps and deadened limbs, this one hurt. A lot.

‘We could definitely have won that game,’ said Hamish Watson, all but spent after playing the full 80 minutes on a day when hard men were dropping like flies.

‘It’s not one of those days when you’re thinking: “F***. They were a lot better than us.”

‘We definitely could have won it. So that’s more frustrating. But we also know what went wrong. We’ll try to fix that for the Wales game.

‘Obviously everyone is pretty gutted because we knew we hadn’t won here since 1999, we were in the lead and definitely in position to win. The game was there to be won. Definitely.

‘When Tim Swinson scored that try, I think you saw that France were there for the taking.

‘Then, from the kick-off, we gave away the ball straight away — and they scored a penalty two minutes later. They managed to draw it level pretty quickly.

‘If we had kept that lead and just exited properly, maybe got another penalty, their tails would have gone down. We could definitely have gone on and won the game.’

Ifs and buts, what might and could have been?

Venture too far down that road and you end up repeating the losers’ lament favoured by beaten sides the world over.

Yet there is no doubt that Scotland had this particular French team rattled, worried, more than a little unnerved.

In a match where possession and territory were split almost perfectly down the middle, the difference between victory and defeat could be measured in a handful of errors and misjudged moments.

The odd rush of blood, the tendency to choke or flap under pressure, was almost understandable, given the physical nature of the contest.

When have you ever seen a Test with so many stoppages to tend to the wounded?

Not injured, by the way. Wounded. Because this was sport at its most basic, war minus the shooting, a game that could have been played without a ball for 20 minutes at a time; its only purpose seemed to be as a focal point for the melee.

Could — should — Scotland have sought to avoid a head-on engagement, instead working possession to their strike runners and supporting their lines?

Easily said, tougher to actually do.

Watson, whose relentless work at close quarters should not be overlooked, had a clear enough head to pinpoint Scotland’s failings in the aftermath, admitting: ‘I think, when we got the ball and held on to it, we all made yards.

‘At times, though, we would just give the ball away a bit stupidly. There were a lot of turnovers in the game. We didn’t look after it as well as we wanted. So, when we didn’t stick to our game plan, it didn’t go our way.

‘In the second half, I don’t know what the exact figures are, but there were a few stupid off-loads, a few penalties because we didn’t get support over the ball quickly enough.

‘We didn’t do enough to tire them out and use our backs wide.

‘The French looked like they were tiring at times. But when they get the ball, that’s when they’re dangerous — all the big forwards love that sort of stuff.

‘If we could have kept the ball longer, they would have tired.

‘But, in that second half, we didn’t keep the ball as we would have liked.

‘Another score for us after that second try, their heads would have dropped — and that would have made them feel tired.

‘If you look at the first try, we didn’t panic, we went through the phases, didn’t try any stupid off-loads — and then scored in the corner.

‘If you’re chasing the game, boys are going to try little off-loads that they didn’t need to try.’

When Scotland kept it simple, they exposed France’s weaknesses and indiscipline.

Josh Strauss illustrated that point more than any player in the visiting ranks, making 52 metres in 15 carries — every inch of his progress coming while being grabbed, hit, dragged down or run over by an opponent.

On a day when the scrum was dismantled and resources stretched so thin that Cotter could have used another six replacements on the bench, it occasionally looked as if Scotland were over-thinking things a bit.

If they’d stuck to the basics, worked through the phases, the French would have cracked. Honest.

In the 12 days between now and the game with Wales at Murrayfield, they’ll have plenty of time to reflect and analyse.

It’s unlikely that the core message will vary much from that delivered by key players during an on-field huddle at full-time.

‘It was a few of the boys speaking, just saying what we need to do over the coming weeks,’ said Watson.

‘We’ve got a week off then a week to prepare for Wales, an extra week. So we just need to keep our heads up. It’s a loss but there were positives there.

‘We’re still in the championship, definitely. We’ve got Wales at home, which is a huge game for us.

‘We won our first game at home, so there’s no reason why we can’t beat Wales.’

Watson makes a good point. There is no reason at all why Scotland cannot beat Wales. That doesn’t mean they will, however.

Yesterday was a reminder that, in any sport, effort and courage — without composure — aren’t always rewarded.

We know what went wrong and will fix it