As warm-up matches go a meeting with the world champions serves as a pretty useful exercise and with tongue only slightly in cheek that was one way of interpreting Steve McCormack’s assessment of his Scotland side’s meeting with the mighty Kangaroos on Friday night.
The man who hails from Wigan, the heartland of English rugby league is among the few in his team’s camp with no bloodline connecting him to Scotland but the professional opportunity he took on 12 years ago that has turned into a passionate labour of love as he has formed a team that has earned respect in rugby’s 13-man code means there can be not the slightest doubt about where his loyalties will lie next Saturday.
It was a fixture that was unimaginable when he first took on this job, part of what will be a celebration of rugby as this first England-Scotland match serves as a fireworks night curtain-raiser for a match that may well decide which of the antipodean giants finishes this tournament ranked number one in the world.
McCormack’s excitement at the prospect is why, for all that history was made in its own right when his men faced Australia’s Kangaroos in Friday night’s tournament opener, going down 54-12, he essentially saw it as an opportunity to make necessary adjustments to a level most, if not all of them including those who have played in NRL, Super League or World Club Championship deciders, have never encountered.
“The England v Scotland game is the biggest in the tournament for me,” he said.
“To play Australia first up is good preparation. If we didn’t know the intensity and the magnitude of our challenge we certainly do now. I can’t wait.”
In saying so he pointed out that while Australia had played the Kiwis in their warm-up match, Scotland had been playing a testimonial game against a Cumbria XIII in Barrow-on-Furness and the opening exchanges reflected that as the Kangaroos raced into a 22-0 lead after just 14 minutes.
They extended that to 26-0 with their fifth try in the 23rd minute. Yet in the next 42 minutes of a match in which several fringe members of the Australian squad were seeking to get noticed while also knowing points difference could be important in this short-sharp competition, the Scots matched their two tries with two of their own from Ryan Brierley and Ben Kavanagh, Danny Brough converting both as the leeway was reduced to 36-12 before, as McCormack acknowledged, his men almost inevitably ran out of steam.
“I’m very proud, but we don’t want to be just known as a team that are very proud,” he subsequently observed.
“Our start didn’t help us, we didn’t quite deal with the intensity Australia showed, but as the game went on we got to grips with it and caused them some problems.
“We could have just rolled over and had our bellies tickled but that wasn’t the case. We scored good tries and had a couple of opportunities we could have taken. Considering that we had a couple of outside backs that were injured, I thought some of them worked overtime, but we’ll get better next week.”
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