A KICK IN THE TEETH
Townsend offers support to sinner Kinghorn after his late penalty miss costs Scots dear
SCOTLAND head coach Gregor Townsend believes Blair Kinghorn will feel the loss to Australia ‘more than anybody’ after his heartbreaking last-minute penalty miss.
Although it was a relatively straightforward kick, Kinghorn pulled it wide to allow the Australians to leave BT Murrayfield with a one point victory. ‘He (Blair) will feel it more than anybody,’ said Townsend, who is backing
Kinghorn to bounce back from his miss. ‘In the dressing room afterwards Blair was down.
‘I talked to him about the technical side of things as he can’t dwell on a kick that doesn’t go over in the last minute of the game, or anytime.
‘I know that is easy to say but it is what you learn from that. Is it keeping the head down longer? Is it the follow through? What technical things do you have to work on?
‘Obviously for him it is going to hurt but that is sport. The width of a post decides whether you win or lose sometimes.’
Townsend said he would be happy keeping Kinghorn on kicking duties in the game against Fiji next weekend if he is selected.
Asked if he had expected his fly-half to put over the penalty, he replied: ‘He has been kicking well in training. In the third Test against Argentina he only missed one and that was off the crossbar, so he has kicked well for us in tough environments before.
‘He doesn’t kick regularly at his club but a few tens don’t kick regularly and he has to use this as a learning for him so the next time he gets the chance, he knows what to do technically. He’ll bounce back.’
Apart from the missed kick, the head coach felt Kinghorn did well in open play, scoring a magnificent solo try and setting up one for full-back Ollie Smith on his debut at BT Murrayfield.
‘Blair did a lot of things we wanted him to do well and he led the team in attack and had done that all week in training as well,’ said Townsend.
‘As far as our attack goes, I don’t think we fired that many shots in the first half and played a little bit inside of ourselves when we got in the opposition 22 in particular.
‘That changed in the second half when there was more movement of pass and shifting the target which got more of our ball carriers into play and we created opportunities.’
Townsend singled out a pass from Kinghorn to captain Jamie Ritchie that he fumbled in the second half as a key moment. ‘I spoke to Jamie afterwards and had he held his space a bit more there was a big space we could have gone on to score a try from,’ said Townsend.
‘I always realised we would not be at our best from the first minute of the first game of these four, so maybe we were maybe just a wee bit too safe in the first half.
‘When we play the top teams who have the best defences in the world we have to be more than safe. I felt we did enough to win the game — but we didn’t, which is frustrating.’
Captain Ritchie also backed Kinghorn to shake off the disappointment of the missed kick and urged the Scotland supporters to get behind him.
‘Blair will bounce back, I know he will,’ said Ritchie.
‘It is important that as a player group and us as a nation get behind him as he did a lot of stuff really, really well.
‘I back Blair and I am confident in his ability. We all make mistakes as players and he will bounce back from this.
‘It was a frustrating game for us overall. We spoke during the week that there would be times when we would be under pressure but we also spoke about how we would turn these moments round and get them back.
‘I think we did that really well and you saw that near the end when we gave ourselves an opportunity to win it — but unfortunately it didn’t go over.
‘I am proud of the boys in the way they performed and we will learn lessons from it.
‘As for Blair, he did a lot of good things out there and did outstanding things all over the pitch — But unfortunately missed one kick.
‘Everybody makes mistakes and we had opportunities to win the game before that, so it should not have come down to that. I told him to keep his head up and be proud of how he performed.’
Ritchie felt his team let defeat slip through their fingers and it was one that got away for the Scots.
‘We definitely created more opportunities than they did,’ he said. ‘The lesson for us is to just take these opportunities because we could have gone into the last few minutes with a bigger lead.
‘I thoroughly enjoyed being Scotland captain for the first time, but we lost which takes a lot off it.’
Australia head coach Dave Rennie admitted he was relieved at the final whistle as he feared the worst when Kinghorn lined up his kick.
‘There was a hell of a noise in the crowd and I thought it was over,’ he said. ‘We were happy to hang on and I am proud of the effort from the players.
‘But we do know that we can do a lot better.’