New era or false dawn?

Senior Sports Writer

Saturday 9 March 2013

ThIS weekend and the next two will give us a real indication of whether something of an upturn in the fortunes of Scottish rugby is under way or whether recent long overdue signs of improvement have been merely something of a statistical inevitability.

Scotland can make history with a third home win of the campaign today. Picture SNS

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Kevin Ferrie

Put it this way: if you were to throw 62 balls in the air, 15 of them white and the other 47 black, then plot where they lie after landing, it is statistically unlikely there would be no instance of two white ones being closer to one another than any of the black ones.

Until 13 days ago, though, that was pretty much what had happened in Scottish rugby, the "foot and mouth" Tests of September 2001 having been played, after all, closer to the start of the 2002 Six Nations Championship than to what preceded them in the 2001 campaign. In 62 Six Nations Championship matches, Scotland had failed to put together two wins that fell closer to one another than to a defeat or a draw, Effectively, the 63rd ball was thrown up against Ireland and back-to-back wins were finally recorded. Many, not least Scotland's players and coaches themselves, proclaimed the win to be lucky, having been achieved despite minimal possession accrued.Some of us see it a little differently. As that charge was laid repeatedly in the days that followed, I reminded those saying it that the game is about defending as well as attacking. A combination of Scotland's front-line defence and their scrambling when that was penetrated was, for by no means the first time in recent years, world class.It has been by keeping opponents' scores down, rather than creating their own, that Scotland have claimed most of their best wins under their last three coaches, against Argentina, Australia, England, France, Ireland, South Africa and Wales.Whether sucking up punishment then clinically taking hard-earned opportunities can be a long-term recipe for success is debatable, of course.Immediately after the win over Ireland. Scott Johnson, the team's caretaker coach, equated it to Muhammad Ali's "rope-a-dope" trick which won the Rumble in the Jungle. In the past, as long ago, I think, as when Frank Hadden's side beat England in 2006, my own parallel has been with the counter-attacking catenaccio system first employed by Italian football teams in the 1960s.All of which said, no Six Nations team have more of a capacity to keep pounding relentlessly until the opponent can take no more than this afternoon's visitors to Murrayfield, Wales.Their scrummaging power was exemplified by the way the pride that Italy take in their prowess in that facet of the game was dented in Rome a fortnight ago, and the return of Alun Wyn Jones' experience will do them no harm in either the lineout or the loose.The restoration of Sam Warburton to the back row at the expense of his lightning-quick openside rival Justin Tipuric is, meanwhile, a signal Wales intend to be even more physical at the breakdown than they were in the Stadio Olympico.Behind them, the pack has the brutish – by scrum-half standards – Mike Phillips, whose half-back partner Dan Biggar has an array of strong-running options, with Jamie Roberts and Jonathan Davies capable of punching holes in any defence. Meanwhile, two wingers of similar stature, George North and Alex Cuthbert, can pick their angles, as can the elusive Leigh Halfpenny, who is slightly smaller than the rest but, as Stuart Hogg, his opposite number, observed this week, is no stranger to gym work either.In terms of their capacity to find openings in opposition defences, their approach may lack the subtlety of the mercurial Irish, but, as Johnnie Beattie, Scotland's resurgent No.8, noted, they have rightly stuck to supremely effective methods in recent years. It has allowed their superb back three to accumulate a combined haul of 31 tries in 87 matches. Remarkably, given Scotland's horrible ineptitude in that department in recent years, that is a marginally inferior strike-rate to that of Hogg and his wingers Tim Visser and Sean Maitland, who have amassed nine in 25 matches. In ideal conditions, then, today's match would have the potential to be one of the most thrilling ever played between the countries. There is, though, no Millennium Stadium-style roof at Murrayfield and conditions are not expected to be anything like ideal, placing increased emphasis on the presence of Duncan Weir on his first Test start.He and Greig Laidlaw, his half-back partner, who can hardly be described as vastly more experienced in the Test arena as he makes only his fourth start at scrum-half, must ensure the tactical battle is won if, as is expected, it is to be one of those bitter, snowy or rainy Scottish spring days.Get it right and they can make history, since no Scotland team have won three home matches in a championship before. Perhaps the odds favour them, too, since no team have inflicted as much pain on Scotland as Wales in the past 10 years with a string of defeats broken up by that solitary win registered by Hadden's side in 2007.The 46-22 drubbing at Murrayfield in 2005 probably did more than any other result to end Matt Williams' brief tenure as Scotland's head coach, while the terrible events of 2010 in Cardiff, when Thom Evans' career was so horribly ended – were probably the first real clue that things were not destined to go Andy Robinson's way in the job.Nor was that the only day that fortune did not favour Scotland in that sequence but, with some evidence their luck is beginning to turn, what an irony it would be if it turns out that in Johnson – mention of his name provokes something approaching ridicule in some quarters in Wales – a talisman has been found.

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