Finns couldn’t get any better for Russell as he pulls Scots’ strings
SCOTLAND 52 ARGENTINA 29 Finn Russell ran the show at BT Murrayfield, surely putting to bed once and for all the thorny question of who should wear the No. 10 jersey for Scotland.
He created six of the Scots’ eight tries at HQ yesterday with a virtuoso performance that saw him empty his bag of tricks, bagging the Man-of-the-Match award as well as 12 points from the kicking tee.
When he wasn’t conjuring tries with his trademark “outthe-back” offloads, he was making them by slicing through the Argentine defence or poking inch-perfect grubber kicks through the cover.
Not bad for the man who started the Autumn Nations Series out of the squad having been deemed by coach Gregor Townsend – if by no one else
– his country’s fourth-choice fly-half.
“Most people would see on the pitch that I am enjoying myself, I am smiling all the time, I am having fun with the boys,” said Russell.
“We are running some good tries in and it’s great to be a part of that. It’s great to be back, I love playing in front of a packed Murrayfield and I’m just glad that we were able to put on a bit of a show for the crowd that came in.”
Townsend admitted: “He has really played well the last two weeks. He’s come in determined. And I thought his decisionmaking was very good.
“We’ve been really pleased to have Finn in this form. It’s great that he’s playing some of his best rugby now.”
Scotland’s gameplan was to create space for Russell to work his magic and pick out members of Scotland’s dangerous back line – tellingly, all their tries were scored by backs – and Darcy Graham was the chief benefactor.
He scored a hat-trick and was joined on the scoresheet by Sione Tuipulotu who notched a brace – the best coming when he powered his way over after collecting an outrageous inside offload from Russell – Duhan van der Merwe, Cam Redpath and Stuart Hogg.
This was the first time Scotland have racked up a half-century against the Pumas – sixth in the World Rankings, three places above Scotland – but don’t think they were simply cannon fodder, though the result was never really in doubt after flanker Marcos Kremer’s 22nd-minute red card when his swinging arm caught Scotland skipper Jamie Ritchie in the head.
They scored four tries through Jeronimo de la Fuente, Matias
Alemanno, Edinburgh points machine Emiliano Boffelli and the game’s last score, scored by replacement prop Ignacio Ruiz fully seven minutes into stoppage time.
They weren’t wholly out of the game until the final 10 minutes, and had pulled the score back to 19-15 at half-time.
But their downfall was their discipline. This game saw ref Karl Dickson produce no fewer than six cards – five yellows to go with Kremer’s red.
Incredibly, the Pumas had to play 10 minutes of the second half down to 12 men when second rows Alemanno and Tomas Lavanini were sent to the sin bin within seconds of each other.
Even more incredibly, they gave a masterclass in how to play with reduced ranks as they held Scotland to just one score in this spell, and actually went he length of the paddock to score a belter of their own.
Their other sin-binning came when an already feisty encounter erupted in a full-scale brawl with 20 minutes to run.
It was impossible to sort out what went on as scuffles erupted left, right and centre and the referee settled for sin-binning one man from each team, Ritchie and Pumas prop Thomas Gallo.
And in the last minute of regulation time, Tuipulotu was shown a harsh yellow when he was adjudged to have dump tackled Argentina full-back Juan Cruz Mallia.
SCOTLAND: Hogg; Graham, Harris (Redpath 61), Tuipulotu, Van der Merwe (Kinghorn
70); Russell, Price (White 54); Schoeman (Bhatti 66), Brown (Turner 58), Z Fagerson (Walker 66), Gray, Gilchrist (Young 76), M Fagerson, Ritchie (Capt.), Dempsey (Christie 58). ARGENTINA: Mallia; Delguy (Tetaz Chaparo 63), Orlando, De la Fuente (Paulos 51), Boffelli; Carreras (Sanchez 62), Bertranou (Bazan Velez 77); Gallo (Isa 77), Montoya (Capt.)(Ruiz 65), Bello (Medrano 57), Alemanno, Lavanini (Moroni 62), Gonzalez, Kremer, Matera.