REMEMBER when Scotland were branded a first-half team - one that would stay in contention before the break then run out of steam and lose in the second half? It’s only a few weeks since that accusation was common, and yet it feels like far longer, for the simple reason that whatever scant evidence there was for it in the first place has been non-existent in recent games.
In Rome, Scotland were just six points up and under heavy pressure before pulling away for a 36-20 win in the closing minutes. On Sunday against France, their lead was down to three points at one stage before they secured a 29-18 victory with Tim Visser’s late score. And even in defeat by Wales, Duncan Taylor had the last word with a try which reduced the margin of defeat to four points.
In other words, this Scotland team is easily fit enough to go the distance in games - at least as fit as their opponents in the Six Nations Championship. When they have lost, as they did against England as well as Wales, it is not because they lacked their opponents’ stamina. Rather, they played some way below their best in the Calcutta Cup match, then suffered defensive lapses at crucial times in Cardiff.
In any case, even when a team does score fewer points and concede more in the second half than in the first, the explanation for that is not always a lack of fitness. Sometimes, quite simply, you are up against superior opponents, who are accustomed to playing at a consistently higher level. Eventually, over the course of a game, that consistency tells.
This is particularly true when such teams are up against a side like Scotland, who had lost nine consecutive games in the championship before winning in Rome. No matter their insistence that morale in the camp was high, the Scots’ self-belief had to have been affected by that losing streak.
And the thing is, you do not suddenly become significantly fitter over the course of a few weeks. Even in the World Cup warm-up games, Scotland proved they had staying power - albeit at times, as against France in Paris, it was not quite enough to ensure victory.
If memory serves, it was at the World Cup itself that the label “first-half team” started to be attached to Scotland, with the initial culprit being Eddie Jones. Then the head coach of Japan, Jones, now in charge of England, felt impelled to stir things up before his team’s meeting in Gloucester with the Scots, a match that came just four days after their epic win over South Africa.
So he suggested that his own team would outlast Scotland. It was an implausible claim before the game, and after Japan’s 45-10 defeat Jones came close to admitting he had only said it for nuisance value.
No-one will be queuing up right now to try to revive Jones’ assertion, and you will not find many people who are ready to criticise Scotland for anything else either. Granted, two wins do not amount to much in themselves, but there is no doubt now that the squad are heading in the right direction - and playing a very pleasing brand of rugby while doing so. And, while confidence and hard work and perseverance have all played their part in helping the team recover from those early defeats, one factor which has helped greatly is the improved strength in depth of the squad.
Nowhere was that more in evidence on Sunday against France than in Peter Horne’s performance after coming on for Finn Russell with just six minutes on the clock. You always worry when you lose your playmaker so early in a game, but Horne, who is usually a centre, was the perfect deputy.
“I thought he was outstanding,” Greig Laidlaw, the captain, said yesterday. “It’s never good to see your playmaker go off, especially when you prepare all week on the basis that he’ll be there. So it was a blow to lose Finn - we all thought losing Finn was going to make things tough. But it says a lot about Peter that it didn’t really make a difference to us.”
Russell’s head knock means he is still a doubt for Dublin, but Laidlaw explained he would not be concerned if Horne had to start in the No 10 jersey. “Going on Sunday’s evidence, no, I wouldn’t be worried about him starting there,” the scrum-half said.
“I know we’ve got good options in that position now. That’s probably for the first time in years that we’re starting to get options around the squad, be it at 10 or in the centre, wherever. It’s becoming a strong squad and you need that in international rugby. We’re starting to build depth for the first time in a while.”
The depth is greater in some places than others, of course, and, with Grant Gilchrist still on the sidelines, the absence of Jonny Gray through injury could well cause problems at lock against Ireland. But the movement is indisputably in the right direction.
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