SCOTLAND would once have been fairly happy to have come to Paris, competed well, and ended up losing by only six points. Yesterday, however, after they were beaten 22-16 in the Six Nations Championship match at the Stade de France, Vern Cotter and his players were left frustrated and disappointed at having come so close.
“We’re not particularly happy to lose the game,” Cotter said. “We’ll have a good look at some of the reasons we didn’t have control from start to finish. There will be an honest review and we’ll move from there.”
Scotland knew that France would try to overpower them, and they hoped that the physical effort to gain dominance would tire the home team out as the game entered its final stages. But Cotter acknowledged that was not how the contest had panned out, with the French recording the last two scores of the game.
Read more: France 22 Scotland 16: losing bonus only reward in bruising battle
“Credit to the French team, they applied pressure all the way to the end,” he added. “The rucks were hard work, a fiercely contested part of the game. The plan didn’t come off, and we’ll put another one in place for Wales.
“The final 20 minutes - we train for these type of scenarios. They [his own team] showed a lot of courage in defence not to give up a try when they had 10 minutes on our line, showed some real character.
“There were bits of the game we didn’t link well and we’ll look to improve that, but the guys dug in hard when losing a couple of players and we regrouped reasonably well. We weren’t second best, and we maybe needed one more possession and with field position we could have threatened, but we were unable to do that.”
The losing bonus means that Scotland now have five points from their opening two games following the win over Ireland, but the more significant outcome for the remaining matches in the championship could be the injuries to Greig Laidlaw, John Barclay and John Hardie. Barclay took over as captain after Laidlaw went off in the first half, and when he too was forced off Jonny Gray became skipper. A medical bulletin on the injured players is expected today.
“Greig has hurt his ankle,” Cotter confirmed. “Other players who came off were head injuries, so we’ll see. Other players are banged up as well.
“The game was a bit of a stop-start and we couldn’t get rhythm into our attack. Our first try was well constructed but we didn’t manage to do that again. Credit to the French, they put pressure on us and were physical - the breakdown was a tough affair. Coming away with one point is better than none and we move on to the next game.”
Read more: France 22 Scotland 16: losing bonus only reward in bruising battle
The most bizarre moment in the contest was the conversion missed by Finn Russell immediately below the posts. Cotter would not be drawn on whether the referee had hurried the stand-off unnecessarily, before the permitted time for the kick had elapsed, saying he had yet to speak to his player.
“I haven’t asked the question or found out. It hasn’t been discussed - if there was more than only two points in the game we might question a bit more, but there wasn’t. It might be something we’ll have a look at as well.
“I’m not sure what happened. You can’t blame it [the loss] on one thing. Many things led up to that - it was the unforced errors we talked about, and the territory we needed but couldn’t get in the second half.”
Guy Noves, the France coach who had seen his team lose narrowly to Australia, New Zealand and England in their last three matches, was pleased as well a touch relieved to come out on top this time. “Scotland played to a high quality and gave us a hard time in the match,” he said. “Last week we lost to England in the last few minutes, so tonight I’m very happy we won in the last few minutes.”
After Wales’ defeat by England on Saturday, Scotland’s loss leaves the English as the only team who can win the Grand Slam this season. Their next game is against Italy, while France take on Ireland and Scotland are at home to the Welsh.
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