Toony is disappointed to have let down Doddie
WALES 21 SCOTLAND 10
WALES 21 SCOTLAND 10
Gregor Townsend last night said his team did everything they could to win the Doddie Weir Cup for his old Scotland team-mate.
“I looked up a couple of times and Doddie was on the big screen and the reaction he got from the supporters was tremendous,” said Townsend.
“We put huge effort into that game, we really wanted to win that match and the trophy. I felt the way we kept going at Wales in the second half, yes we didn’t get the points that were there but we were doing all we could to win that game.”
Doddie’s wish was for Scotland to bring the cup named in his honour back to Murrayfield.
Scotland, in truth, didn’t look remotely like a team capable of winning anything for the first hour of this somewhat odd encounter.
The introduction from the bench of brothers George and Peter Horne added the zip the Scots had been sadly lacking. There was an immediate uptick in tempo and tenacity and the Dark Blues spent much of the final quarter battering away at the Welsh whitewash.
But even with a man advantage for the last 10 minutes after Wales’ replacement hooker Elliot Dee was sinbinned for a ruck offence, they just couldn’t add to their first-half points that came from another try for skipper Stuart Mcinally and the first five points of Adam Hastings’ international career.
Peter thought he’d grabbed a score when he got on the end of little bro George’s chip into the try area, but ref Mathieu Raynal – wrongly, in my opinion – ruled he’d not got a touch and the ref also ruled out, rightly this time, a Johnny Gray “try” for a double movement. The only score of the second 40 came when Jonathan Davies notched a try shortly after the interval and both that score and George North’s first-half touchdown will have had Scotland defence coach Matt Taylor tearing his hair out.
The Monday video review session won’t be comfortable viewing for either of Scotland’s starting centres as both Alex Dunbar and Huw Jones fell off tackles on the huge Lions wing as he thundered over the line.
And Jones was culpable at the second score, too, when he was handed off all too easily by another Lion, Jonathan Davies, on his way to the line after it had been simplicity itself for fly-half Gareth Anscombe to peel round the Dark Blues’ defence from a lineout and put the try on a plate for him.
To be honest, Huw Jones had a shocker. He’s a terrific threat in attack, as his tryscoring record will attest, but the whispers about his defensive frailty grew in volume as the afternoon wore on, with it being no surprise that he was hooked midway through the second half.
The real aim of the game was to bed in the likes of Blair Kinghorn and Adam Hastings as understudies to first-pick full-back and standoff Stuart Hogg and Finn Russell respectively, and to give the all-edinburgh front row more international game time together.
Kinghorn did well enough, he’s a big unit and did what he could to inject some urgency into Scotland’s initially hesitant attack, while “Son of Gavin” Hastings had more of a mixed bag of a game.
He seemed a bit too frantic at times and it looked as if an early mistake, when he failed to find touch with a penalty, had rattled him.
He more than most was guilty as Scotland kicked away too much ball.
But he will only improve and playing the full 80 minutes in the atmospheric Principality Stadium, not quite full but still a bearpit, will stand him in good stead.
Something else that has to improve is Scotland’s discipline.
Particularly in the first half the visitors continually coughed up stupid and needless penalties in kickable positions, meat and drink to the ever-accurate Leigh Halfpenny who bagged three in the first 20 minutes and later added a conversion.
The silver lining for Scotland is that this was nothing like the comprehensive defeat they suffered here exactly nine months ago. Much was made of that being a callow XV that played like rabbits caught in the headlights, but yesterday’s squad actually had fewer caps and were up against a Wales team stuffed with Lions and with more than twice the cumulative cap tally.
They used that experience to good effect to keep Scotland in a stranglehold for the first 60 minutes, until the brothers Horne came on to give the game a much-needed boot up the backside.