Scotland post match discussion thread

[RDW]

1 Grant - 7

Good in the scrum, solid game

2 Ford - 6

Lots of work in the tight but still questionmarks on his throwing

3 Murray - 8

Good in the scrum and top tackle count in the game

4 Gray - 8

Very strong game with massive amount of physicallity - he's not running in from 40m but he's throwing his considerable size about the pitch, which is what we need him to do

5 Hamilton - 7

Much, much better. Looked puggled when he was subbed off having given everything. More of the same please!

6 Harley - 8

Great first start - the missing link in the back row recently. Allowed the rest of the forwards to do their thing with his tackling and ruck work

7 Brown - 7

Great workrate and good captain's performance

8 Beattie - 6

Looked like he took a bang before half time and thought he should have gone off. Quiet game and was AWOL for their try

9 Laidlaw - 8

Flawless kicking and a much better game at 9, dictating play

10 Jackson - 7

Much better and a lovely bit of play for Visser's try

11 Visser - 7

Fantastic individual try, needs to work on the rest of his game

12 Scott - 8

Best game for Scotland. Strong in defence, good in attack, excellent try and could have had 3

13 Lamont - 7

Much better game and well taken try. Still not a 13!

14 Maitland - 7

Such a skillful player - so glad he's playing for us

15 Hogg - 8

The Lions will be calling if he keeps this up

[kiakahaaotearoa]

Not much to argue with those ratings RDW. One you've left out though is SJ. He could have gone into his shell and gone for a win. But he seemed to retain the positivity from his players and yet shored up the forwards and defence. I'm sure he was under a lot of pressure but so many tries from two games and suddenly the issue with AR and Hadden of having a good defence but offering nothing in attack to this situation seems like a big step forward. Early days yet but a big result against Ireland, Wales or France and the players will gain huge confidence. The important thing is to kick on from this game and not make it an isolated moment.

[123456789]

I fully agree, except maybe on Johnnie Beattie who was unfortunate with their first try that he was tripped up, he, like most of the other forwards, returned to the idea that it was their job to win the ball primarily and carry second.

I've said before that if Scotland can win at least two more matches this six nations, then the year could be very prosperous. We have the tournament thing in the summer which will give us a chance to blood new players and others to step up considering 4-5 of our top players are likely to be away.

[MacKnocked-on]

Vital from a supporters point of view that we're becoming a good team to watch again after goodness knows how long, I've sat through more than my fair share of dire matches at Murrayfield over recent years. It's great for the youngsters to have heroes like Hogg to support.
Is the next game on a Sunday? Bit worried about Cross being the first choice 3 for that game.

[RDW]

Definitely true about success and role models - 50 000 at Murrayfield today, I'm sure it would have been sold out several times over if people knew this was gonna happen!

[funnyExiledScot]

Agreed on those ratings - think they are about right.

Thought Denton should have come on for Beattie rather than Brown. Not that Beattie was bad, just that I think it would have kept the back row balance together, and possibly prevented their try (although it was lovely skill from Parisse to open up the channel).

The Matt Scott try was excellently worked. Maitland's ball skills make him such a useful player coming off his wing, because he isn't just a strike runner like Visser, he looks to create as well.

One of the most positive Murrayfield experienced I've had. Really pleased for the players, and a good spontaneous rendition of Flower of Scotland in the 2nd half as well - been a while coming.

[belovedfrosties]

Those all seem pretty fair to me, think a 7 is a bit generous for Visser though, took his try but any international winger should be scoring that and he was pretty quiet for the rest of the game as well.

Good seeing Gray back to something like his old self and Hogg is looking more and more like a Lions fullback. Haven't seen too much of him in defence though which is my only worry, but will reserve judgement until i get a good look at it.

Scott is a decent looking player as well

[R!skysports]

Have to say I would take at least 1 off all players {except Hogg}

We had almost no ball and just a good defensive shift is not enough

We were still quite poor with ball although positive we took our breakaway tries well and make some

But in reality it was not a good performance

[RDW]

[quote="Riskysport"

But in reality it was not a good performance



[/quote]



You do know we won and scored 4 tries yeah??

[funnyExiledScot]

We were still quite poor with ball although positive we took our breakaway tries well and make some

What? We made a fair few line breaks, scored a great 1st phase try, counter-attacked well, kicked well - I think your expectations are perhaps slightly too high if you thought that was a poor performance from Scotland.

Jackson played well I thought. Think he's probably out of the last chance saloon with that performance, similarly Hamilton and Murray. Reckon SJ will let Laidlaw, Jackson and Scott settle now in this tournament, and see if they can develop as a unit. Jackson's work setting up the Visser try was nicely done.

[R!skysports]

Yes. And that is a positive.

But in reality we had 40% of the ball and 2 of the tries were mistakes by the Italians. One should have been a score for them

Some good improvements, but against Ireland we give that amount of ball and we will get spanked

[allyt2k]

Have to say I would take at least 1 off all players {except Hogg}

We had almost no ball and just a good defensive shift is not enough

We were still quite poor with ball although positive we took our breakaway tries well and make some

But in reality it was not a good performance

[R!skysports]

Don't get me wrong it was a marked improvement and I hope the team can continue to gel and work together.

[Solid8]

But in reality it was not a good performance

In reality it was a solid performance where we made up for glaring shortfalls from the week before against a physical, committed pack who have played together for a long time and are well drilled. The scoreline was flattering but we are in the highly unusual (for us) situation of having a set of backs that can create opportunities from anywhere on the park. This is a good starting point nothing more, it will all be for nothing if the management and players rest on their laurels and don't strive to be better. From the interviews I saw last week from Hogg and Maitland I hope that their attitude rubs off on the rest of the squad, if this happens the current crop of players could turn out to be a good team.

Now we need to sort out the management at Edinburgh.....................

[funnyExiledScot]

Yes. And that is a positive.

But in reality we had 40% of the ball and 2 of the tries were mistakes by the Italians. One should have been a score for them

Some good improvements, but against Ireland we give that amount of ball and we will get spanked

Risky, under Robinson we frequently had 60% possession, but no cutting edge. We went a whole tournament without scoring a try, despite having plenty of ball, mainly down to pointless sideways pick and drives.

He used to bang on and on about ball retention and "going through the phases" as if my simply having the ball you would score, but we never were able to convert pressure into points.

Those Italian mistakes were caused by the intensity and precision of the Scotland defence and counter-attack. It's something the All Blacks have been doing for years. Let the opposition have the ball, let them have 20 consecutive phases, then wait for a carrier to get isolated, turn the ball over and away you go.

I agree that in some areas we need to improve, it wasn't the perfect performance by any means. We still missed a few tackles and allowed them in behind us on a couple of occasions, and had Hogg not brilliantly picked the ball off Orquera, they'd have moved to within 10 points of us and things would have got tight.

It's was a good performance overall though, and a marked improvement.

[allyt2k]

Yes. And that is a positive.

But in reality we had 40% of the ball and 2 of the tries were mistakes by the Italians. One should have been a score for them

Some good improvements, but against Ireland we give that amount of ball and we will get spanked

Interception try by Hogg? that wasn't an Italian mistake, Hogg had to make the decision to not defend the player and try the Interception and then still run the length of the field, would call that a gutsy call that paid off.
Don't know what other try your referring too?

[Solid8]

Think he's referring to SLamont's try.

[allyt2k]

Sean created that try himself with coming thru the gate legally, putting a good boot on the ball and being sharper than the opposition to pick it up and run, no Italian mistakes in that or luck in that.

[Solid8]

Totally agree with you both of those tries were good pieces of counterattacking rugby.

[monty junior]

Yup and it wasn't like those were the only opportunities to score Lamont's try was justice for being Robbed of Scott's second who could have easily had another earlier. Visser was extremely unlucky not to get a couple to, good performance, we showed a cutting edge that was the main difference between us and the Italian backs who are frankly useless.

[R!skysports]

I agree with all that, but my point it is a little bit too optimistic to give an average score of 7.5 to our players,

We were better and have some great things to build off but still a long way to go.

[Solid8]

Arguably Hogg's try did come from an Italian mistake, that ball should not have been offloaded unless he was sure the tackler was committed. That said being able to read the opposition and trust your instincts in that position to that extent in my opinion means that Hogg made that try.

[bsando]

I see where risky is coming. Italy were very poor today and Scotland punished them for it. That is a considerable improvement however, and previous Scotland teams would not have been capable of doing it. Yet there is still lots of work to be done.

Jackson didn't perform well enough in my opinion, too many passes to stationary forwards who kept getting picked off by Italy. Luckily we managed to keep hold of the ball, but if he does that again vs Ireland it'll be bad. He had his forwards working very well for him today yet he didn't really create anything good and his attempts were not very well constructed. His kicking was better but still not great. His off load to visser was very good though, and in the loose he is very good, just needs to get better at dictating play and making right decisions under pressure. I think heathcote deserves a go but I suspect it'll be weir on bench vs Ireland with Jackson starting again.

Beattie deserves credit for his performance, he kept opposition guessing by passing the ball a lot and occasionally going for a run. He did well in rucks along with brown who was just everywhere! But Harley was the bloke who really made life tough for Italy, he could be a great asset for Scotland.

Today's tactics seemed to work well, but I still think we kicked ball away too much, hence the possession stats. Against a better side Scotland would have been punished for doing so.

[monty junior]

Doesn't matter anyway, how many tries have we conceded over the year's from our mistakes and how many times have we not been able to capitalize on the chances we have from errors. Now we have backs capable of it and people complain?..

[allyt2k]

I agree with all that, but my point it is a little bit too optimistic to give an average score of 7.5 to our players,

We were better and have some great things to build off but still a long way to go.

I don't really care about the ratings for players, everybody has there own opinions on how players perform and most sensible people should know that harder teams await than Italy and we have to back up this win.

But to say that our tries where because of Italian mistakes or just lucky is not fair on our players and the hard work they put in for that win after so much media and a minority of fans bashing there performances and the worst off all questioning there nationality.

time to give some credit to the players

[funnyExiledScot]

Jackson didn't perform well enough in my opinion, too many passes to stationary forwards who kept getting picked off by Italy. Luckily we managed to keep hold of the ball, but if he does that again vs Ireland it'll be bad. He had his forwards working very well for him today yet he didn't really create anything good and his attempts were not very well constructed. His kicking was better but still not great. His off load to visser was very good though, and in the loose he is very good, just needs to get better at dictating play and making right decisions under pressure. I think heathcote deserves a go but I suspect it'll be weir on bench vs Ireland with Jackson starting again.

You say Jackson "didn't really create anything good", and then say "his offload to Visser was very good though".

I really cannot fathom why anyone could genuinely think it's in Scotland's interests to drop Jackson after that game, and more importantly I certainly can't think why anyone thinks Heathcote would do better. I know we've done this to death, but Jackson was fine today, good distribution, he made a nice break early on, good defence, his kicking was better (although Hogg should take the kicks to touch) and he set-up a try plus played a role in setting up the first phase move leading to Scott's try by taking the ball flat and putting it to Maitland.

It was a positive performance, let's allow him to build on it and develop with Laidlaw and Scott. Chopping and changing, and slinging in a rookie with so few games this season cannot be the answer.

No issues with Heathcote on the bench though. Weir is lucky to be there.

[sensisball]

jackson was significantly better this week.However his kicking is still inconsistent. I would prefer to have Heathcote than weir on the bench for Ireland.

Harley was outstanding today. His work rate, tackling. lineout and work at restarts was superb. He surely must start the next match. Gray was much better sticking closer to the contact and doing the donkey work that a 4 needs to do if Laidlaw is to get good ball.

The wee man had a really good game behind a galvanised pack.

Im sorry i know he scored a great try but Lamont just isnt a centre. He wasnt punished for some really bad kicking today but Ireland wont be so generous if he makes the same errors in a fortnight.

It was great to see some real desire and attitude back in the pack, well done dean Ryan.

[sensisball]

Oh and i stand corrected re Ross Ford, he is still able to play well at int level. He had a good game in the tight and the loose. Dsiappointed that with the game won and his club captain on the pitch that MacArthur didnt get 10 minues to get the feel of Scottish rugby, as he will surely be needed later in the championship.

[R!skysports]

Overall I am happy with the result and the improvement over last week. Great to see our pack completing.

We still have a lot of areas to improve, but if we can build on this then we could get another scalp or two.

Jackson should stay, but still a few areas of concern from him.

[allyt2k]

Can't see many changes for the next game unless it's injuries and Murray being out we'll have to bring someone on the bench in place of Cross/Low.
Agree we need to stick with Jackson, his kicking is still dire but Laidlaw can keep those duties and he does play the line really well and suck in defenders to make space for other players, Haven't seen enough of weir this season to comment on if he should be ahead of Heathcoat on the bench, altho I would rather persist with Jacko/Weir and not rush Heathcote, we have limited players to pick from so wouldn't like to just disregard young players who can still improve.

[Imperialbigdave]

Totally forgot about Lamont trying to be a scrumhalf everytime laidlaw was in a ruck. erm, id rather you just stuck to the outside backs sean.

[allyt2k]

Don't mind Lamont at 13 just now due to De Luca being out but during the summer tour we really need to push another player in this position, haven't seen enough of any of the Glasgow players in this position but followed Duncan Taylor when he was at Bedford and has played a lot at 13 he'd be my pick.
Still like Sean but prefer him covering from the bench.

[NeilyBroon]

Vital from a supporters point of view that we're becoming a good team to watch again after goodness knows how long, I've sat through more than my fair share of dire matches at Murrayfield over recent years. It's great for the youngsters to have heroes like Hogg to support.
Is the next game on a Sunday? Bit worried about Cross being the first choice 3 for that game.

Yeah I expect that's partly why they decided to give Low a bit of a test in the scrum today, see how he copes.

I reckon it'll be a front three of Grant, Ford and Low

I'd personally switch Harley to openside in a couple of weeks too, lets get Kelly back to 6, thank God we don't have Stroks anymore!

Overall I'd say I was very happy with the game today. We punished a team for their mistakes rather than simply beat them. This is a marked improvement. I agree with some comments here we need to work on retaining quality possession and not let the players get isolated in rucks so much.

The main thing for me is that hopefully this win has given the lads a bit of fire in their bellies and a greater hunger to win. If we can back this up with a victory v the Irish I think Scotland may finally be on the straight and narrow. I'm trying to keep cool about it though and going to wait until I see how Ireland perform tomorrow.

[George Carlin]

Maybe just change this to being a general 'post match thread', RDW?

Certain things are clear and stand out like a banana in a bunch of grapes:

1. First time we're scored 4 tries in open play for almost a decade.
2. Under Robinson, we took up to 70% of possession ourselves and won staggeringly few games with it.
3. All 4 tries came from backline players.

Why on earth should we discount the merit of tries because they came about as the result of opposition mistakes? The scoreboard doesn't and that's what matters.

We would have scored two more if Laidlaw's kick had bounced into Visser's hands and if the touch judge hadn't been sleeping and called Maitland's pass to Scott forward when it clearly wasn't. But we didn't. We can add on these scores 'morally' if we want to be all [insert name of other home nation whose name clearly cannot be spoken] about it, but that's not what the scoreboard showed. If we accept that premise, why are we reluctant to take credit for the Hogg and Schlong scores?

Mistakes result from the pressure the other team put on you. You can only play the team in front of you. Both are worth remembering - particular in light of the breathtakingly stupid comment made by someone on another thread that Hogg's try wasn't that great because he chose to break past three forwards rather than three backs. As though the choice to do so was somehow an underhand way to score and an 80m break following an interception that a player was brave enough to try and make somehow should not be celebrated.

The most gratifying thing of all was Johnson's low key reaction to this. A hallmark of the Era of Haddock was Frank's tendency to get in front of a TV camera after a mildly encouraging result and blurt that we were now world beaters.

Johnson pointed out Harley's missed tackle in the opening 10 minutes and praised Ryan Grant for getting a bone bruise in the opening minutes but insisting on playing for an hour. SJ knows that this counts for nothing unless we can run Ireland close. We know that too.

But let's refrain from being Scottish just for 2 minutes and enjoy a job well done. Tomorrow will bring its own problems.

PS - Very difficult to drop Jackon, I would think. I am a big Weir fan but there's no way he would have been savvy enough to delay the first pass to Visser, taking Orquera out of the game, befoer setting up the first try. And that's why he's there.

PPS - Heathcote did set up a very nice try for Bath at the weekend with a clever chip kick through, through...Oh, the choices.

[aucklandlaurie]

Vital from a supporters point of view that we're becoming a good team to watch again after goodness knows how long, I've sat through more than my fair share of dire matches at Murrayfield over recent years. It's great for the youngsters to have heroes like Hogg to support.
Is the next game on a Sunday? Bit worried about Cross being the first choice 3 for that game.

Yeah I expect that's partly why they decided to give Low a bit of a test in the scrum today, see how he copes.

I reckon it'll be a front three of Grant, Ford and Low

I'd personally switch Harley to openside in a couple of weeks too, lets get Kelly back to 6, thank God we don't have Stroks anymore!Overall I'd say I was very happy with the game today. We punished a team for their mistakes rather than simply beat them. This is a marked improvement. I agree with some comments here we need to work on retaining quality possession and not let the players get isolated in rucks so much.


The main thing for me is that hopefully this win has given the lads a bit of fire in their bellies and a greater hunger to win. If we can back this up with a victory v the Irish I think Scotland may finally be on the straight and narrow. I'm trying to keep cool about it though and going to wait until I see how Ireland perform tomorrow.

Shows you how dumb I am, I thought they were playing lefts and rights, The old Wallaby Formation.

[George Carlin]

You're right - they were, Laurie. Couple of journalists in the Scots press noted Johnson's instructions that the two could interchange as they wanted.

[aucklandlaurie]

Oh and another thing, Scotlands scored more tries in the last four months than they have in the last four years... Well I dont know that as a fact but it feels like it, and I like the way they are looking for those chances...

[alive555]

id give an 8 to

harley
maitland
scott
laidlaw

[R!skysports]

Wowjust rue watched it

Italy had 72% of ball in second half

[RDW]

Right - come on people, let's stop being all Scottish!!!

We have a reputation of being all dour and depressing and we're living up to it hear picking apart a performance like that. Let's look at the facts:

We won 34-10
We scored 4 tries
We only conceded 1 - when the game was dead and buried
We could have scored 2 - 3 more
We had some strong individual performances

We should be shouting this performance from the rooftops - not bemoaning small, individual issues!!

Yes I agree that it doesn't suddenly make us world beaters and doesn't herald a new dawn, but we've been crying out for a performance like this since 2006 so let's wallow in the glow of a great victory it for a little while before we get the large bump back down to earth!

[R!skysports]

Rdw

Ok.

Great result and 4 tries. Bonus point win

[RDW]

That's more like it!!!

Just watching the game again - will be good to see what it was actually like.

[RDW]

p.s. I'm not saying bringing up negative points is not allowed - I just think we need to look positively too

[NeilyBroon]

Just avoiding any disappointment by being realistic!

But it really was quite a spectacular performance from the boys, as I said we can now punish teams for their mistakes, rather than just hammer penalties over, which is a very nice feeling. In fact if we keep this up we could be competing for top try scoring nation of the 6Ns, now there's a novelty!

[21st Century Schizoid Man]

I see where risky is coming. Italy were very poor today and Scotland punished them for it. That is a considerable improvement however, and previous Scotland teams would not have been capable of doing it. Yet there is still lots of work to be done.

Jackson didn't perform well enough in my opinion, too many passes to stationary forwards who kept getting picked off by Italy. Luckily we managed to keep hold of the ball, but if he does that again vs Ireland it'll be bad. He had his forwards working very well for him today yet he didn't really create anything good and his attempts were not very well constructed. His kicking was better but still not great. His off load to visser was very good though, and in the loose he is very good, just needs to get better at dictating play and making right decisions under pressure. I think heathcote deserves a go but I suspect it'll be weir on bench vs Ireland with Jackson starting again.

Beattie deserves credit for his performance, he kept opposition guessing by passing the ball a lot and occasionally going for a run. He did well in rucks along with brown who was just everywhere! But Harley was the bloke who really made life tough for Italy, he could be a great asset for Scotland.

Today's tactics seemed to work well, but I still think we kicked ball away too much, hence the possession stats. Against a better side Scotland would have been punished for doing so.

Eh ? Did you see Visser's try by any chance ? Excellent fh play by Jackson who had a very sound game with Laidlaw.

[bsando]

True true! Well I am still just so happy to see Maitland playing for Scotland. He adds so much to our back line and we have dangerous players everywhere now. Gray was looking much better yesterday too, his confrontation with botes was hilarious! Our height in forwards really paid off yesterday too. Harley and Hamilton used theirs very well to pass and tap ball back. But the basics were very good. No silly knock ons, good line outs, good scrums. It was a fine performance that showed the quality of this Scottish side. Long may it continue!

[bsando]

What I mean was, when Jackson received the ball from Laidlaw in midfield he seemed to never create anything good schizoid. He passed ball to forwards who were standing still and did inside passes to stationary players a lot. That's what I didn't like.

But when we had go forward ball, he was great.

[21st Century Schizoid Man]

RD,

think you are a bit mean about Ross Ford (giving him a 6) who I thought had his best game in a Scotland shirt - awesome in the loose. Welcome back Ford. And to see Hamilton actually put some effort in for once was very encouraging.

BTW Beattie was inadvertently tripped by his own player (Richie Gray I think) at the base of the scrum so he could not cover Zanni for the Italian try.

Best laugh was when the Scottish replacements were warming up in front of the North Stand and Denton flicked his hair and the wee pre-pubescent lassies all screamed. Denton ignored this but guess who took an interest - Max (Street Fighting Man ) Evans

[RDW]

I'm 15 minutes in and have already counted 3 times that Laidlaw was the first man to the ruck and, despite being the smallest man on the pitch, put his body on the line to ensure we won the ruck.

For a tiny man he has massive heart and determination!

[RDW]

RD,

think you are a bit mean about Ross Ford (giving him a 6) who I thought had his best game in a Scotland shirt - awesome in the loose. Welcome back Ford.

Where is 21st and what have you done with him???

[Sponsored content]