THE KINGHORN
So impressive in game but late loss of nerve will haunt him forever
JUST how far can a reliable goal-kicker take you in international rugby? Well, in 2007, it took England all the way to a World Cup final. England only scored 12 tries in seven games across the whole tournament. South Africa, the team who beat them in the final, scored 33.
Even Scotland and Fiji scored more times than England, who eventually wound up ninth on the try-scoring list.
Yet, despite playing a fairly limited brand of rugby, Brian Ashton’s side almost went all the way to lift the Webb Ellis Cup thanks to the left boot of Jonny Wilkinson.
Wilkinson kicked all 12 points as England beat Australia 12-10 in the quarter-final. In the semis, he kicked nine points in a 14-9 win over France, including a late drop-goal.
South Africa’s Percy Montgomery was another man who had ice in his veins and, once it came to the final, he and Wilkinson kicked 18 points between them as the Springboks won 15-6.
In 2013, Leigh Halfpenny was at his metronomic best for the British and Irish Lions, kicking a remarkable 49 of their 79 points across the three Tests as they won the series 2-1 in Australia.
This is what having an elite kicker can do for a team. They can help find a way to edge the tightest of games, turning average performances into winning performances.
Wilkinson, Montgomery, Halfpenny; three players who you’d have put the mortgage on to nail a penalty or a conversion when it really mattered most.
Scotland do not have a player like that at the moment, and haven’t done since the retirement of Greig Laidlaw. There is no Chris Paterson in this current squad.
Finn Russell was never viewed as a world-class goal-kicker, but he has improved over recent years, and kicked 23 points for his club side Racing 92 in a 43-38 win over Brive on Saturday afternoon.
Meanwhile, back in Scotland, Blair Kinghorn spent his Saturday evening trying to step out of Russell’s shadow — and, to some extent, he did so.
Kinghorn had a fine game, assisting the opening try for Ollie Smith with a lovely delayed pass, before stepping on the gas to score a fine solo try himself in the second half.
It was a try Russell would not have scored because, for all his many talents, a turn of pace is not among them.
Yet, by the same token, Russell would most likely not have missed the late penalty to win the match, whereas Kinghorn did by dragging it badly wide of the posts.
And therein lies the problem for
Gregor Townsend. You can believe that Kinghorn is a good player who had a good game on Saturday, whilst also believing that Russell remains Scotland’s best fly-half. The two are not mutually exclusive.
But, if Russell is to remain out of the picture, the reality is that Scotland won’t get very far with a part-time kicker like Kinghorn.
Although it was a bad miss, the blame is not entirely to be levelled at Kinghorn. Ultimately, Townsend is asking him to do a job for Scotland which he does not do for Edinburgh.
At club level, Kinghorn is not a regular kicker. Emiliano Boffelli is first-choice. Jaco van der Walt would also be ahead of him in that particular pecking order. Maybe Mark Bennett, too.
If Scotland’s future is to include Kinghorn at No 10, then that future must also contain a regular and trusted kicker somewhere else in the team.
Yet, here’s the thing. In February 2019, Kinghorn scored a Six Nations hat-trick against Italy at BT Murrayfield. In doing so, he became the first Scotland player to score a hat-trick in the Championship for 30 years.
But he didn’t play as well that day as he did against Australia on Saturday. This was Kinghorn’s best game in a Scotland jersey, yet also his most painful.
Nobody really remembers the fact that Colin Montgomerie played some of the best golf of his life at the US Open in 2006. The only thing that sticks in the memory is what happened on the 72nd and final hole at Winged Foot, where Monty knew a par could well have won him the tournament.
Even a bogey would have been enough to force a play-off with Geoff Ogilvy, and perhaps Phil Mickelson. Yet, inexplicably, Monty finished with a rotten double-bogey six.
What should have been one of his finest days turned into one of his most anguished. And so it was for Kinghorn at Murrayfield on Saturday evening.
This was Kinghorn’s Winged Foot. By scoring a terrific solo try and having the chance to kick the match-winning points against the Wallabies, this was his rugby equivalent of vying for a major. The criticism and scrutiny of Kinghorn could have been stopped. Instead, it will now grow. Why? Because he choked when the game was on the line.
Elite players nail those big, match-winning moments when the pressure is really on, whereas Kinghorn fluffed his lines badly.
Townsend explained that Kinghorn had been kicking well in training. Yet, in some respects, that is irrelevant. There isn’t a crowd of 65,000 in training, the pressure is minimal.
Should Scotland even have been relying on a last-gasp penalty to win it? Probably not, given the fact they led 15-6 heading into the final 20 minutes.
This is not a vintage Wallabies side. Dave Rennie’s team are currently ranked ninth in the world, an all-time low for the Australians.
Scotland sit three places above them and, even without the likes of Russell and Stuart Hogg, were still viewed as favourites by many heading into Saturday’s game.
But they did not deserve to win this match. Their indiscipline bordered on embarrassing at times, although the Aussies weren’t exactly squeaky clean either.
In the end, Scotland conceded 14 penalties to Australia’s 15. If the golden rule is no more than ten to win at Test level, neither of these teams will trouble the elite nations any time soon.
On his Test debut at Murrayfield, Scotland full-back Smith danced his way to the try-line to get things going in the first half. It was a lethal finish from the Glasgow Warriors man.
But the game was stop-start. Neither team found much of a rhythm. Scotland’s wingers, Duhan van der Merwe and Darcy Graham, were starved of service out wide.
Kinghorn’s kick-and-chase try showed his footballing abilities as much as his pace, but the Wallabies roared back through a try from skipper James Slipper.
That set the stage for Bernard Foley, scourge of Scotland in the 2015 World Cup, to kick the penalty which ended up winning the match for the Wallabies.
But it really shouldn’t have been that way. In his heart of hearts, Kinghorn will know that more than anyone.