Scotland v Samoa, 11 November

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SCOTLAND V SAMOA
11 November 2017
14:30 GMT (UTC+0)
Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh

Live on BBC One, Connected TV, online & the BBC Sport app & Radio Scotland 810MW

Referee: Nic Berry (Australia)
Touch judges: [tbc]
Television match official: [tbc]

A. Head to Head

10 Played 10
8 Won 1
1 Drawn 1
1 Lost 8
254 Points 155

B. Recent Form

10 October 2015
St James' Park, Newcastle
33 – 36 to Scotland

8 June 2013
Mr Price Kings Park, Durban, South Africa
27 – 17 to Samoa

23 June 2012
Apia Park, Apia
16 – 17 to Scotland

27 November 2010
Pittodire, Aberdeen
19 – 16 to Scotland

20 November 2005
Murrayfield, Edinburgh
18 – 11 to Scotland

4 June 2004
Westpac Stadium, Wellington, New Zealand
3 – 38 to Scotland

18 November 2000
Murrayfield, Edinburgh
31 – 8 to Scotland

C. Teams

SCOTLAND

Stuart Hogg, Tommy Seymour, Huw Jones, Alex Dunbar, Lee Jones, Finn Russell, Ali Price (all Glasgow Warriors); Darryl Marfo, Stuart McInally, WP Nel, Ben Toolis (all Edinburgh), Jonny Gray (Glasgow), Barclay (captain - Scarlets), Hamish Watson (Edinburgh), Ryan Wilson (Glasgow).

Replacements: George Turner, Jamie Bhatti, Zander Fagerson, Tim Swinson (all Glasgow), Cornell Du Preez (Edinburgh), Henry Pyrgos, Peter Horne (both Glasgow), Chris Harris (Newcastle).

SAMOA

Ah See Tuala, Paul Perez, Kieron Fonotia, Reynold Lee-Lo,David Lemi, Tim Nanai Williams, Pele Cowley;Jordan Lay, Manu Leiataua, Donald Brighouse, Josh Tyrell, Chris Vui (capt), Piula Fa'asalele, TJ Ioane, Jack Lam.

Replacements: Motu Matu'u, James Lay, Hisa Sasagi, Fa'atiga Lemalu, Ofisa Treviranus, Mealani Matavao, AJ Alatimu, Alapati Leiua.

Well, happy with the HT score even if we have not quite hit our straps.

Nothing to much to complain about though, mainly just a bit of rust to polish off. You can see the intent, just the execution not quite working.

Huw Jones just looks so dangerous when he is on the ball, he must just terrify defenders.

Well picked up by Nicol - that looked like a shoulder charge on the lead up to their try. You've seen penalties (and yellows) given for that this season!

Watching the beeb and the half time thing about Doddie Weir.

What's with Scot Hastings? Is he trying to get work as a double for Farago?

Wonderful tribute to big Doddie

How pleasant it is to see Scotland dominating the set piece

Another good try

McInally on the hattrick!

McInally and Toolis are having a lot of fun out there!

Is Fagerson holding up his end, as it were?

That was never a try!

Samoa pretty deadly from 5 yards out

Great turnover by Watson. He has made a few this game

3 debutants coming on - big call!

Marfo has done well. A good debut

We're once again down on possession this half

That was all a bit too easy for Samoa. The game's not over yet!

Starting to really worry about what New Zealand are going to do to us!

Fair play to Samoa, they have not given up on this game. It looked like it was running away from them after the 4th Scottish try

Gives us a bit of breathing space but one more Samoa try and we're on trouble

Restarts are still our achilles heel then!

Restarts!!!!!!

Restarts?

We all seem to be on the same wave length on this one!

Ok now we're in trouble. Got a very inexperienced team on too.

Can I start to panic now? And I'm not ever watching it. 

It's tense enough on Twitter.

Badly needed that - credit to the team for constructing it. Lovely from CDP!

That was much better, our try of the match

CDP is back baby!!!

Lucky we can score tries these days as our defence is awful

FFS! It is really worrying how easily they're scoring points against us

This is a crazy game

Our defence has been crap - NZ will rip us to shreds if we play like this.

John Beattie talking pish saying our defence has been good!

Sounds like it never stopped being a game of 7s!

Feck me I'm nervous. How did we get in this situation??

Nanai williams collects a foot in his face. Total accident but lucky it was not worse

Put this game to bed please!

My cardiologist says that I'm not allowed to follow Scotland any more.

Well that was utter p!sh.

Well it's good to get the win, some great tries, but there was a lot to not like about that performance!

Credit to Samoa they could so easily have dropped off after the 1st half, but they really came at us in the 2nd. We had some good play in there, but overall that wasn't good enough - the scoreline should never have been that close. Most of their tries came off us handing them possession through mistakes (restarts!) and then our scramble defence not being able to deal with their power. A bit disappointing really

Well a win is a win but we sure made hard work of it. Surely we can only improve from here.

Well done to Samoa, who represented their country with great pride and passion. Even more impressive considering all that has gone on for them in the build up.

Next week will be the stuff of nightmares if we defend like that again

I wonder what odds you would have got on 11 tries being scored in that game. 

Looking forward to seeing the highlights, which I will watch with the Benny Hill theme tune playing in the background.

BBC Sport urinating all over that Scotland performance:
http://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-union/41934487

Totally fair assessment in my opinion

In my mind there were good displays from Marfo, McInally, Toolis, Watson, Hogg

Pass marks for fagerson, Price, Dunbar, Jones, Jones

Quiet games from Gray, Barclay, Wilson, Russell, Seymour

Chris Harris had a bit of a debut to forget - knock on and completely at sea for their late try!

Positives
Marfo, McInally, Toolis, Watson.
Huw Jones, his outside break continues to be a thing of beauty.
Lee Jones had a good game. We scored six tries.
Horne's try was a cracker.

Negatives

Nel injured  after he went off the scrum was steady but never really troubled the Samoans on their ball.
We never managed to pull away from them. Huw Jones dropping a restart to let them back into the game was far too typical.

But we won. We scored over 40 points. Most of that 23, Nel excepted, should be fit for next week. There will be lots to work on in training but it could have been a lot worse.

Great entertainment that game!

Worrying how easy the samoans made the pick and go look but we scored 6 tries and Horne looked competent coming on for Russell. Watson a great game with some brilliant turnovers.

Restarts! arrgghhhhh

jimbopip wrote:Positives
Marfo, McInally, Toolis, Watson.
Huw Jones, his outside break continues to be a thing of beauty.
Lee Jones had a good game. We scored six tries.
Horne's try was a cracker.

Negatives

Nel injured  after he went off the scrum was steady but never really troubled the Samoans on their ball.
We never managed to pull away from them. Huw Jones dropping a restart to let them back into the game was far too typical.

But we won. We scored over 40 points. Most of that 23, Nel excepted, should be fit for next week. There will be lots to work on in training but it could have been a lot worse.

Where's Jimbo and what you done with him??

Thought Nel fractured his arm?

So apparently that's the most points we've ever conceded in victory.