9 months on – why Scotland’s shot at redemption for Wales walloping may not be straightforward
Almost exactly nine months ago, Gregor Townsend sat in the Principality Stadium media room ashen-faced and reeling, wearing the look of a man who had just seen a ghost.
The build-up to Scotland’s Six Nations voyage was overwhelmingly positive. This squad had talent by the boat-load. It had savage, mobile forwards. It had a dazzling pivot. It had an arsenal of devastating strike runners. It had a November programme where the Wallabies were dismantled at Murrayfield and New Zealand were nearly – so very nearly – toppled. And it had Townsend’s brilliant rugby brain.
Pundits cooed over their furious, high-tempo stuff and the elan of Finn Russell, Huw Jones, Stuart Hogg and their cronies.
Many fancied them to rock up in Cardiff, where they had not won since 2002, and bamboozle a Wales team seen in some quarters as one-dimensional plodders, a spent force under Warren Gatland.
Scottish spirits were as high as they had ever been approaching a Six Nations campaign, but the reality was brutal and deeply wounding. In a game of chaos, Wales shredded them. Scotland’s half-backs, Ali Price and Russell, had two of their poorest outings as professionals, crumbling amid the Principality maelstrom. Wales pounced on the glut of errors, bludgeoned them up front, and inflicted an almighty 34-7 walloping.
After the match, Gatland spoke about how confident he had been, how all the talk of Scotland’s expansive play irked him, how he reckoned his players would “batter” their opposition and win by 20 points. For Townsend and his team, it was violent reminder of how ruthless the Six Nations can be.
Saturday’s Test will not have such a thunderous backdrop. Arranging out-of-window internationals for financial not sporting benefits is a vexed issue, but fielding an entirely home-based squad does throw up chances for newcomers and fresh combinations to flourish.
Price’s name immediately leaps out. On that wretched day in February, his intercepted pass led to the first of four Welsh tries. The ball was gobbled up and scored by his opposite number Gareth Davies – Davies starts again this time around.
Price suffered a gross decline in form at that point and by his own admission, put on a few too many pounds. The fact that he has been picked at scrum-half ahead of the scintillating George Horne and Henry Pyrgos, a fabulous performer for Edinburgh, shows how well he has recovered, but this will test his mental toughness as much as anything.
Russell does not have a similar opportunity to exorcise Cardiff demons – he will be tackling Vern Cotter’s Montpellier in the colours of Racing 92, where he is revelling – and Adam Hastings starts at 10. The Glasgow man is cut from the same cloth as his rival, an instinctive maverick with glorious attacking weaponry. He is arguably the Pro14’s form player, having beaten more defenders (25) than anyone else in the league and sits near the top of the charts for clean breaks and metres made.
This is a huge game for Hastings against a canny opponent in Gareth Anscombe, a fantastic midfield and a snarling back-row, before the biggest crowd he will ever have encountered. His quest is to wrestle the jersey from Russell, whose grip on it has been pretty unbreakable over the past four years, largely due to a lack of sustained competition.
“It’s not so much Adam pushing Finn, it’s Adam looking to get that number 10 jersey himself,” Townsend said midweek.
“He’s now going to play two internationals in a row after Argentina in the summer and we’ll now be looking for a response from Finn. We’ve seen that already from Finn this year. He’s got a big game this weekend against Montpellier but it’s a genuine competition for that jersey.
“His temperament, his confidence is what you want – looking to try things, looking to make things happen and being positive.”
As expected, Edinburgh’s lanky Blair Kinghorn gets the nod at full-back with Stuart Hogg injured. Club-mate Darcy Graham, a diminutive but deadly back-three player whose status was elevated from “training with the squad” to “full squad member” and now likely debutant in the space of a week, could make his Test bow off the bench. Luke Morgan, Wales Sevens all-time top try-scorer, makes his in the hosts’ number 11 jersey.
Alex Dunbar and Huw Jones form a potent and meaty Scottish centre pairing. Their showdown with last year’s breakout star Hadleigh Parkes and fit-again Lion Jonathan Davies, playing his first international of 2018, will be seismic, as will Ben Toolis and relentless Jonny Gray’s duel with Cory Hill and the wily Alun Wyn Jones in the engine room.
The breakdown too will be a vicious battleground. Townsend has picked three workhorse loose forwards in 22-year-old Jamie Ritchie, Hamish Watson and Ryan Wilson, with captain Stuart McInally a fiend over ball from hooker. In Dan Lydiate, Justin Tipuric and Ross Moriarty, they face three of the best around.
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Watch: Scotland flanker Jamie Ritchie looks ahead to Wales game
There are storylines galore on the field – from Price’s redemption mission to Morgan’s maiden flight, and Danny Wilson, in charge of Cardiff Blues for three years, returning to the Welsh capital for his first Test as Scotland’s forwards coach. Gatland reckons at least one of his pack, Blues prop Dillon Lewis, has a point to prove to Wilson, who “did not rate him that highly”.
Off it, the build-up has been dominated by tragedy and embarrassment. Gatland flew home to New Zealand after the death of his father but has returned to take charge of the team.
Then there was the Doddie Weir furore, the seedy mess both unions created for themselves by naming the cup to be contested on Saturday after the great former Scotland and Lions lock, who is battling motor neurone disease, without offering any donation to his charity.
It should be noted that the Welsh Rugby Union and, in particular, Scottish Rugby, do a wealth of fine work with the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation. The match was never explicitly billed as a charity game – rather a tribute to Weir, with several fundraising events scheduled – but that was the impression many supporters were under.
Failing to contribute any of their reported seven-figure profits from a Test bearing the name of this beloved and immensely brave colossus was morally wrong, and quickly erupted into a public relations catastrophe. The unions were shamed and pilloried. After fearsome condemnation, they will now offer a combined six-figure donation.
That prelude was distinctly unsavoury, but now the outrage has subsided, a compelling battle beckons.
Scotland took a shellacking here in February, but they are not weak-willed. Their wins over France, England and Italy later in the championship attested to that. Seven Tests, including a summer jaunt to the Americas have passed since that day. Less than half of the squad that suffered the opening-round humbling feature this weekend, yet the wounds are still nagging, and the sense of unfinished business palpable.
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Comments on RugbyPass
Omg… you are bruised And battered Benny. Stop crying … the scoreboard speaks. What a pathetic lover you are.. 🤣🤣🤣
127 Go to commentsPacific Lions, cry me a river
127 Go to commentsThis is the single worst piece of journalism I have ever seen since your last one. As a neutral, who really states that there should be an asterisk next to a win? You are an utter embarrassment to real AB fans, journalism and that joke of a house which pays you for this nonsense. Get a life, Ben.
127 Go to commentsGuys. Cancel the World Cup champions after this analysis. It changes everything. Ben knows. We’ll have to unengrave the Bokke off the trophy and hand it to the ABs, now that I’ve been enlightened about this illegitimate win. This needs to be done. Now!
127 Go to commentsBen is right here though, Springboks were woefully poor with the advantage they had throughout this game. The France match was heroic because that was an even contest this match had it taken place in Rugby Championship would have been an easy win for NZ. If anything this match should tell the Bok coaches that a lot of this team should be changed. They beat this same NZ team by record margin with the same circumstances but with a different core. They bring back the tried and tested guys and they nearly botch this game.
127 Go to commentsI knew who wrote this article from the first few words in the headline…lol. The red card actually did the ABs a favour. It galvanized them, only then did they step up a gear. Before that there was zero momentum.
127 Go to commentsFirstly the foul on Bongi was a planned move just like the NZ master plan with Bryce Lawrence you kiwis are filthy fux perhaps try to play a cleaner game next time I doubt that’s possible tho but don’t worry world rugby is on yr side they trying to take away all the BOKS strengths to help all you weakling as Jeremy Clarkson would say LA OO ZA ERR..🤣
127 Go to commentsAbsolutely spot on Ben. I certainly wouldn't gloat over a win like that. Frustrating as it is it's done and dusted and history will forever show the result.
127 Go to commentsHo hum.
127 Go to commentsNo question they were the better team. But that is the beauty of sport isn’t it!
127 Go to commentsEveryone is into Hurling in Ireland according to Porter, but only 11 of Ireland's 32 counties enter a team into the national competition. Same old blarney.
1 Go to commentsLet’s be honest. The draw and scheduling in the World Cup was a joke but South Africa found a way after having to go the hard (nearly impossible) way to the Cup Final via France and England. NZ had a hard game against France (lost) and had 5 weeks to prepare for the Quarter, 3 weeks knowing it was Ireland. NZ theerfore had to win one big game against an Irish team who played SA and then Scotland 7 days before. They won and it was de facto a semi final because they were playing a relatively weak Argentina team and it was a walk over. In the final a very rested NZ team was playing a very tired SA team and still lost. They couldn’t score more than 11 points. Put another way SA had to find a way to win while tired and they achieved that. NZ should thank their lucky stars that they fixed the scheduling in 2015 otherwise they would be dealing with a Bok treble.
127 Go to commentsPerhaps if Bongi wasn’t targeted and removed from the game in the first 3 minutes it would have been quite a different game. Maybe if NZ also faced the same competition the Boks faced to their win NZ would have looked quite different. The final score shows who outplayed who.
127 Go to commentsRubbish article! Abuladze played most of Exeters matches when fit. He got injured against Glasgow a while ago and is out for the rest of the season, thats why he hasnt played for Exeter and Georgia recently. Do some proper research next time!
1 Go to commentsGotta love it when kids throw their toys out the pram and can’t hack it with the grown ups debate. Here’s looking at you turlough! 😉🤣
148 Go to commentsThey lost the game period move on
127 Go to commentsSpringboks won! Stop winging. You can change the game however much you and your rugby colonizing IRB want to and the Springboks will win you at that too. Your mind is colonized my friend get a life
127 Go to commentsBen, nobody gets fooled anymore by selective and biased data to support an hypothesis. Games are decided on such small margins these days that you win some and lose some, and dominance is a thing of the rugby past. Look at the RWC circle of fortune…. Ireland beats SA who beat France who beat NZ who beat Ireland. And so it goes on. Match officials help to eliminate real indiscretions. If they had been with us years before, no doubt results would have been different. Remember Andy Haden’s dive from a lineout in 1978 for which a match-wining penalty was awarded? Wales should have beaten the ABs that day. They took the loss like the gentlemen they were.
127 Go to commentsWith all the analysis and how good the all blacks were.The fundamental mistake with the ABs is that this is a test match and not an exhibition.There is no better team(country) in world rugby than the Boks that knows how to win a test match(we are post masters at this).We know our rules, we have the discipline, we tackle like beasts, we take our points and we never give up.I now have educated the ABs supporters(at least say thank you).Please stop “bitching” , accept what the outcome is and move along swiftly.
127 Go to commentsAnd they came from behind to win two big games before the final. No one can say what would have happened. Had the boks gone behind the game plan changes and the result may changes. Ifs and ands are irrelevant. The boks won. Neutral critics enjoyed the games they played. Its not a popularity contest. Get over it and move on.
127 Go to comments