Scotland alive and kicking as rivals misfire
THE reality for Scotland was as inescapable as it was ironic. They won this match thanks in no small part to an Argentinian No 10’s inability to kick the ball properly. Exactly how Messrs Messi and Maradona would have fared at BT Murrayfield yesterday will never be known.
But the footballing maestros might well have made a better fist of it with the oval ball than the normally reliable Nicolas Sanchez.
Argentina missed four penalties, three of which came from the boot of their fly-half. It will pain Sanchez that, by his standards, they were relatively simple opportunities.
Watching him shank and hook the ball wide of the posts, Sanchez did not look like the man who has over 700 Test points and is his country’s record points scorer of all-time.
That’s not to say Scotland didn’t deserve to win. A team cannot — and should not — be held accountable for the mistakes of their opponents.
But there was a definite sense that they got away with one here,
sneaking home in a match that could quite easily have gone the other way.
A key difference lay in the fact that Scotland’s own metronomic goal-kicker, Greig Laidlaw, was in no mood to be as generous as Sanchez.
The Scots’ skipper kicked nine of his team’s 14 points, missing just one penalty and one conversion, which were both accurate enough, but just fell agonisingly short of the posts.
However the victory arrived, though, Scotland were in no mood to pick too many flaws in it.
Yes, it was ever so slightly low-key compared to the thrilling style of rugby you would typically associate with Gregor Townsend’s team.
Yes, the ball was painfully slow to emerge from the breakdown at times and the line-out quite often looked like organised chaos. But there were positives.
The defence stood firm, as it had to, by making 174 tackles to Argentina’s 112. There was also the issue of what had gone before over previous weeks.
The Jonny Gray double movement which saw a try slip away against Wales, along with the painfully narrow defeat to South Africa last weekend.
Too often Scotland have found themselves on the wrong side of these fine margins. Sean Maitland, then, was adamant to focus entirely on the W in the win column.
Asked if he felt it would be wrong to be too picky over the win, Maitland responded: ‘Definitely, yeah. It’s Test match rugby.
‘You have to enjoy these types of wins because, pretty soon, it’s all going to be over.
‘You want to enjoy these occasions with your team-mates because these are the best days of your life when you win. You sit in the changing room, sing songs and have a beer.
‘You need to enjoy it, even when you win ugly.
‘It’s good to just grind out a game and win in that sort of fashion.
‘You could tell by the look on the boys’ faces, it was more relief than satisfaction. It’s great that we have a bit of momentum going into that first game of the Six Nations against Italy at home. That’s really important.
‘It was a scrappy game. The first half probably wasn’t the best 40 minutes that we played for a while.
‘There was a lot of turnover ball and that was just the conditions.
‘You know how we want to play; we want to chuck the ball around and have fun, but we went to more of a kicking game.
‘We had opportunities and made some line-breaks. We’re probably a bit disappointed we didn’t finish off those line-breaks. But, yeah, a scrappy game.’ This match was never likely to be a repeat of Scotland’s 44-15 win over the Pumas in Resistencia back in June. On a dreich and greasy November afternoon, conditions were about as conducive to free-flowing rugby as Donald Trump is to world diplomacy. The improvements that Argentina have made under Mario Ledesma are also too significant for that outcome to have happened again. Of the second-half try that finally broke their resistance, Maitland
It’s Test match rugby. You must enjoy it... even when you win ugly
said: ‘I just saw the space and Hoggy (Stuart Hogg) saw it, too. Hoggy communicated it to Greig (Laidlaw).
‘The Argentina winger had switched off a bit and, when he (Hogg) passed it, I thought someone will surely be covering it — and there was just open space. It was just good to score.’
It wasn’t as flashy or flamboyant as the try Maitland scored in the Calcutta Cup victory over England in the Six Nations earlier this year.
That could yet win the Try of the Year award at a ceremony in Monaco tonight.
‘Hopefully, I’ll get team Try of the Year, as well,’ laughed the Kiwi-born flyer. ‘That would top off a nice autumn.
‘I’m going (to the ceremony). Fingers crossed we get it — because it was a great team try.
‘I just caught the ball and ran over. Maybe they should have nominated Finn (Russell) for that pass or Jonesy (Huw Jones) for the run. Those boys keep getting stuck in to me.’
Whatever the outcome, it will come at the end of a weekend where Scotland proved they are not just a one-trick pony.
In a distinctly un-Scotland performance, they found a way of getting the job done, even if it was by the skin of their teeth and the errant boot of Sanchez.
Townsend’s men were roared on by an 11th consecutive sell-out home crowd at BT Murrayfield and Maitland added: ‘The fans were great.
‘A few years ago, we were playing Georgia at Kilmarnock (Rugby Park) and we couldn’t sell that out.
‘Now we sell-out Fiji two weeks ago and 11 games in a row, which is just amazing. That’s just down to the boys trying to entertain the crowd.’