Thriller proved to be quite troubling

Murrayfield try-fest great for selling tickets – but not so much for All Black test

Scripted by BT Murrayfield’s clever marketeers, Saturday’s opening Autumn Test of 2017 could hardly have gone better.

How to get so many in the surprising capacity 67,000 crowd who were making their first visit to the stadium to come back, maybe paying something more like full price next time?

Does an 11-try thriller and the highest points aggregate ever recorded in 92 years of international rugby down Roseburn Street sound okay?

When they’re also showing off the stadium to representatives of another football code in the hope of getting them to rent the facility in future, it could hardly look any better.

But for those of us who have been coming for 40 years or more to watch rugby, picking apart the 44-38 win over Samoa on Saturday is much more troubling.

There should be due credit to the brave brotherhood of Samoa, who seem to love playing Scotland and tormenting us in the process.

Penniless, in “transition” (code for struggling, really) and having to play an extra qualifier to get to the World Cup, they were their usual skilful, physical and proud selves, and they deserved every one of their five tries.

A couple of lucky bounces not finishing in Scottish hands and ending in tries, they might even have won this game.

But they were 32-10 down early in the second half, after Stuart McInally spun off a maul for his second try of the match.

Having struggled for half an hour, the Scots had gone into full European setpiece lockdown, and Samoa predictably had no answer.

Solid, no frills execution, and maybe a ball-carrying threat worthy of the name, and the Scots would probably have twisted the knife further and won comfortably.

Gregor Townsend certainly thought at that point his team would “kick on”, record a morale boosting win and set themselves up for the visit of New Zealand next week.

Instead the malaise that affected the team for much of the first half after the initial euphoria of Stuart Hogg’s 94-second try returned. The kick-off was botched (a recurring theme against Samoa, for those who remember the Newcastle nailbiter in the World Cup two years ago) a couple of tackles missed, and Samoa scored.

Emboldened, especially when the Scots starting trying half-chance passes as Finn Russell meandered through the game not looking anything like the authority we hoped he would be, the Islanders kept coming.

Peter Horne, on as Russell’s replacement, conjured two tries – one with a cross kick that Lee Jones turned into a try for Alex Dunbar, and then with a solo run on one of those support lines he does so well – and that was just enough to get the Scots home.

Scotland’s defence looked shoddy – as it has at various times recently, at Twickenham and in Suva earlier this year for example – but had they held the ball then Samoa wouldn’t have had a chance, as Townsend conceded.

“We need to make best use of ball when we have it,” he said.

“If the defence gives you a certain picture, then take what they give you.

“Samoa had more ball than us and they made the most of it.”

The visitors still made a truck load of errors, and didn’t defend that well themselves.

New Zealand are not going to give up 44 points next week, so the Scots have some work to do.

“We’ve seen that before when a team wins not playing to their best, it certainly sharpens the training but I think we’d have had that anyway with our opposition this week,” continued Townsend.

“We’ll have to be at our very best, New Zealand will score points against us, they score points against any defence.

“To lower our standards in defence is disappointing for all of us, coaches and players. The players take pride in the way they defend, and we’ll have to be better next week.”

The Scots felt they weren’t allowed to exploit their scrummaging advantage – Darryl Marfo had a decent debut, but the other novice debutant Jamie Bhatti will have nightmares at the way Ofisa Treviranus blew past him for the final Samoan try.

Zander Fagerson at least brought some ball-carrying power when he came on for WP Nel, as did Cornell du Preez when he came on later.

It’s hard to imagine competing with the All Blacks without this necessity, as South Africa and Australia found in the later matches of the Rugby Championship this summer.

On the rare occasions they held on to the ball for more than three phases, Scotland looked decent going forward.

But they’ll be put under even more pressure in midfield next week by Beauden Barrett, Ryan Crotty and Sonny Bill Williams on both sides of the ball and they simply have to be more resilient.

On the right side, it was Scotland’s fifth win in a row at BT Murrayfield, the best since the immortal 1990 Grand Slam team went 13 games unbeaten there before losing the 1991 Rugby World Cup semi-final.

Expectation that the present run will continue diminished to zero after events in Edinburgh and Paris on Saturday. There’s considerable work to do to make sure Scotland are even competitive next Saturday.

There should be due credit to Samoa, who seem to love playing Scotland and tormenting us in the process