VERN Cotter is confident that his Scotland squad can play significantly better against Samoa tomorrow after learning a lot from last week’s loss to South Africa. The head coach has made seven changes to the team that was defeated by the Springboks, including the return from injury of Finn Russell and John Hardie.
When the team was named yesterday, Ross Ford and Matt Scott had still to pass their final fitness tests, having picked up head knocks against South Africa. However, Cotter was confident that both the hooker and the centre would be cleared to play - and he sounded just as certain that his team will excel themselves in a Pool B game which will take them through to the quarter-finals of the Rugby World Cup if they win, with or without a bonus point.
“Our analysis of the South African match was quite easy and done fairly quickly, because we weren’t particularly accurate in our first few plays off set phase, which didn’t give us access,” Cotter said. “We became slightly better in the second half, but we know that we’ll have to improve and we’ll look for a much better performance in the contact area.
“If we do that we can move forward. So yes, we learnt a lot from the South African game and we’ve had seven days to prepare.”
Hardie, who also sat out the USA game after taking a head knock against Japan, comes into a reshaped back row with Ryan Wilson. David Denton retains his place at No 8, while Josh Strauss drops down to the bench and Blair Cowan misses out. The other two changes to the pack see Alasdair Dickinson and Ford return to the front row.
In the backs, Russell takes over at stand-off from Duncan Weir, Mark Bennett replaces Richie Vernon at centre, and Sean Maitland is back on the wing in place of Tim Visser. Weir drops out of the squad, with Peter Horne retaining his place on the bench as cover at stand-off and centre.
Sean Lamont will win his 100th cap if he comes off the bench. Richie Gray, who partners his younger brother Jonny in the second row, will win his 50th.
Scotland (v Samoa at St James’ Park, Saturday, 2..300pm): S Hogg; T Seymour, M Bennett, M Scott, S Maitland; F Russell, G Laidlaw; A Dickinson, R Ford, W Nel, R Gray, J Gray, R Wilson, J Hardie, D Denton. Substitutes: F Brown, G Reid, J Welsh, T Swinson, J Strauss, H Pyrgos, P Horne, S Lamont.
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