And just as well too, for there was precious little else to celebrate in this performance at Murrayfield. I’m sure Andy Robinson was desperate to begin his Scotland career with a victory, and it’s certainly an awful lot better than the alternative, but I still felt pretty disappointed with much of what I saw. This was a game that Scotland should have won by a street, but they made it all too hard for themselves.
Under normal circumstances, the possession and set-piece domination Scotland enjoyed would have meant a margin of at least 25 points. But having established that vital platform in the tight, they just didn’t do anything with it. They took their two try-scoring chances well enough, but it was frustrating that they didn’t create more.
Psychologically, it will have done them a power of good. Most of the crowd probably came to Murrayfield expecting a Scottish win, but it was not for nothing that Fiji started the day one place ahead of Scotland in the world rankings. The tangible achievement of this result is that those positions have now been reversed. But Scotland will have to improve in many, many areas if they are to climb any higher up the ladder.
Of course, it was good to see the Scottish scrum go so well, particularly as it was Moray Low’s first start for his country. But why oh why did they not make more of that advantage? When you have a dominant front five you can usually expect your loose forwards to go on the rampage now and then, but the Scottish back row seemed to lack ambition. They didn’t play particularly badly, but then they didn’t play with any great creativity either.
I thought Scotland would have been able to build tempo once they had their noses in front on the scoreboard, but that never happened either. They bashed and bashed up the middle, but very rarely moved the ball wide. They showed a lot of promise in the first half-hour, but then they seemed to retreat into their shells.
In the build-up to the game the weather looked likely to be a huge factor. As it turned out, it was surprisingly mild at Murrayfield, but Scotland still played as if they were in the teeth of a howling gale. It was especially disappointing that they didn’t exploit the wider channels more. Alex Grove was brought in to allow that, but I’m not sure he received a pass in the second half.
As a result, we saw little of the attacking threat of the Lamont brothers or Simon Danielli. These are top-notch players who play at the top level of the European game and they should have been trusted to do more. I know it was massively important to get the Robinson era off to a winning start, but they could have given their confidence an even greater boost with just a little more adventure in their game.
I thought that Phil Godman was at fault in not varying his game a bit more. Maybe he was playing to orders, but it was all too predictable in my book. He just kept carrying the ball up when he could have used some of those chances to get his line moving. Given the problems of the Fiji line-out, there was a powerful case for more tactical kicking as well.
Phil did well as a goal-kicker, but I was mystified by the decision to hand over those duties to Chris Paterson when he came on. Granted, Chris is a world-class kicker, but it looked like they were trying to fix something that wasn’t broke. Chris was given a kick just a few minutes after he arrived on the pitch, and it was no great surprise to me that he missed it.
Still, there were some bright spots in the performance as well. Chris Cusiter looked good as a scrum-half and captain, sharp on the ball and always looking for opportunities. I liked the look of Grove, too, although it would have been nice to see more of his attacking qualities as well. For such a slightly-built player, some of the tackles he put in were outstanding.
Changes? Not too many I’d guess. The most vulnerable of all the players is probably Danielli. He made a couple of howlers in defence and there is no shortage of good Scottish wingers at the moment. He’ll be lucky to keep his place when the side to face Australia is named in a few days.
Scotland won’t dominate the Wallabies as they did the Fijians. Possession-wise, they will have to make a little go a long way. Yesterday, worryingly, they did exactly the opposite.
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