VERN Cotter, the Scotland coach, has insisted that he has the time to turn the team’s performance round before they play Wales on Saturday. The Scots lost 15-9 at home to England on Saturday and have yet to win an opening game in the RBS Six Nations Championship since 2006. Both the result and the performance fell well short of the expectations raised by Scotland’s showing in the Rugby World Cup last year, but Cotter denied that his team had gone backwards since that tournament.
“I think there was progress,” he said. “But we’re frustrated and not particularly happy with our performance. It’s the first time we’ve been back out on the paddock for a little while, and some of that showed.
“We still need to be focused and show total concentration. Games at this level are tight affairs. We have to take it on the chin.
“If I felt we’d been completely dominated . . . but I don’t think we were. We have ways to get about the park and put teams under pressure. We managed to do that at times, but we didn’t hold the pressure on for long enough.
“It’s disappointing not to score a try. There’s more frustration than anything else, because I know there’s so much more that can come out of this side.
“The boys are competitors. They’re just annoyed with themselves. If they take a good hard look at ourselves, which I know they will, and we can fix that and we can fix this. A week is a long time. We can get a few things sorted.”
England won the try count 2-0 and were never behind in the match, playing a simple but effective brand of rugby in their first outing under their new coach, Eddie Jones. Cotter expects Wales to be just as physically powerful, but retains his belief that his team are very close to putting in a winning performance.
“They’re a big, powerful team,” he said of England. “They got us in the second half and held us down there. They’re a powerful side and that put pressure on our support line.
“They’re all big and powerful. I just think there are things that we can take from that game. If we can show a bit more composure at times.
“We were in their half eight times and didn’t score a try. Those are things we really need to work on. It’s not that we’re that far away. We’re close.”
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