Ross Miller says the Scotland coaching staff are encouraging their team to enjoy the occasion and fully embrace the challenge they face in Saturday’s do-or-die final World Cup Qualifying tournament match against Ireland.
Having shown admirable mental toughness to bounce back from demoralising 38-13 loss to Italy in their opening match last Monday with an excellent 27-22 win over Spain on Sunday, the Scots will either qualify directly for next year’s tournament in New Zealand or progress to a final qualifying tournament at a date to be announced.
If they lose then their long wait to make a World Cup appearance, which stretches back to 2010, will be extended for another three/four years. It is a high-pressure situation, but assistant coach Miller says he has complete faith in the players’ ability to take the strain.
“Everyone is feeling great, it is a cup final weekend for us as a group and everyone is in a good place,” he said. “Physically we are recovering, but mentally it is all to play for, so the players had a day away from rugby today [Wednesday] to get their feet up and just enjoy the week as we prepare for a big match.
“I think you’ll have seen from the Six Nations that when we do have the opportunity to play back-to-back games we do improve,” he added. “There was a massive momentum shift in the first half of the Spain game that gave us confidence going into the second half and that is what we have been wanting as a group.
“We look for improvements every time we play, and we are getting those improvements. There are things we aren’t totally happy about and we will keep working on them ahead of Ireland and we will push for perfection and try and kick on every time we play.
“The players are fully aware of the situation, and it is all about staying calm, making sure we control the controllables, and doing what we know we have to do.”
Based on recent form, Ireland will start Saturday’s match as favourites, but Miller argues that this is a standalone fixture.
“You have seen from all the games over the last two weeks, form does go out of the window. Spain were in the driving seat, needing a win over us, going for their second win, but we were able to stop that.
“Anything can happen over the final weekend so we will prepare properly and fully, leaving no stone unturned. We will do everything we can to be ready.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here