Ali happy to dump memories
Ali Price got a Welsh monkey off his back in Cardiff yesterday.
His Scotland side didn’t manage to win the Doddie Weir Cup, but they did avoid the sort of humiliation heaped on them the last time they were in the Principality Stadium,
That was exactly nine months ago when Wales thrashed the sorry Scots in their 6 Nations opener.
Scotland had actually started brightly back then, but the roof caved in when Wales scrum-half Gareth Davies picked off Price’s pass to scamper the length of the pitch for a score that knocked the stuffing out of Scotland.
Yesterday, Price was more like his old self and admitted: “I said to Mike Blair in the changing-room afterwards that this was probably the most, I don’t know if nervous is the right word, but the most I’ve thought about a game before going into it.
“I just wanted to put out a solid performance, do my job.
“Ultimately I want the team to win, we didn’t get that. But in terms of the skills I had to execute compared to this time in February, I’m obviously in a much better place now than where I was coming off after the game last time.
“We came in at half-time and we were four points down, we were right in the game.
“The second half I really thought we grew into it, I thought the bench were brilliant when they came on as well.
“We had two tries disallowed and it was just little inaccuracies in the final third which on another day they go our way and we’re right in it and potentially winning it.
“It was frustrating at times, they didn’t play a lot. I thought we tried to play the game in the right areas but the Welsh boys were a bit more clinical with their scores.”