Matt Scott: 'Worst half of rugby I have ever been involved in'

After more than 250 games across a 14-year career at the sharp end of club and international rugby, Matt Scott has not been immune to a few dark days. The veteran centre was part of a Scotland team ‘nilled’ at Murrayfield by England in a gruesome Calcutta Cup game in 2014. In the same campaign he started the Scots’ record Six Nations defeat – a 51-3 filleting by Wales in Cardiff after losing Stuart Hogg to a red card.

The first of his two previous spells at Edinburgh also brought a 12-55 defeat by Munster – a record home loss for the Scottish outfit in the various previous guises of the URC. But as far as the 34-year-old is concerned, nothing has quite lived down to the first half of last Saturday’s URC fixture against the Lions in Johannesburg.

“That was the worst half of rugby I have ever been involved in professionally,” Scott said. “It hurts.” Edinburgh conceded three early tries and were 22-0 down in as many minutes. The rampant Lions ran in four more to make the interval score a mortifying 48-0 – a record half-time score in the competition’s history.

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The capital side did respond with three second-half scores of their own, but an eighth Lions try made for an unedifying 55-21 final scoreline from an Edinburgh perspective. Surplus to requirement at Leicester, room was belatedly found in Edinburgh’s budget in the summer to recruit Scott.

As the opening 40 minutes unfolded in the suffocating heat and altitude of Ellis Park last Saturday, the experienced centre could be forgiven for wondering if it all hadn’t been a grave mistake. The review process in recent days has been a particularly painful one for a senior cohort including Scott, co-captains Grant Gilchrist and Ben Vellacott, former captain Jamie Ritchie and fly-half Ben Healy.

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“We just over-played, completely shot ourselves in the foot,” Scott reflected. “We ran our forwards into the ground, ran our backs into the ground, turned over the ball to the best turnover attack team in the URC. That’s exactly what we spoke about not doing during the week.

“Conversely, we came in at half-time and then went back to the game plan we talked about, which was being more structured and limiting their turnover opportunities, and we had a better second half. But the most disappointing thing was we started off poorly and weren’t able to pull that back before half-time.

“That is all on the senior players, the leadership group, the game-drivers – your nines and 10s. We have taken responsibility for not being able to address that after they scored their second or third try and saying ‘lads, let’s structure this game up a bit’ because we were just playing right into their hands.

“Maybe (it was) a lack of maturity, not being able to rectify things when they start to go wrong. We got drawn into a certain style of game and some of it… I don’t really know. We had an off-day and it completely got on top of us – the heat, the altitude and stuff.

“We kept trying to out-play them. When you go two or three tries down, it is counter-intuitive sometimes to go to a more conservative game. The scoreboard pressure affects you and you think ‘we need to score tries now’, whereas actually our best chance of scoring points was structuring the game up.

“So there were massive learnings. It was a completely unacceptable performance.  We’ve had a good review, but a lot of the boys have been saying ‘talk is cheap, we need to start putting in performances on the pitch’.

“I could say anything here. We’ve had three games now. The first two we put ourselves in a strong position to win. Obviously we had an aberration of a first half at the weekend, so I think it’s time for us to deliver a good performance.”

Edinburgh’s stated ambition of a top-four finish this term is already looking a long shot after starting the campaign with narrow defeats by URC powerhouses Leinster (home) and Bulls (away) – both games Edinburgh got themselves in positions to win – before the  lamentable capitulation to the Lions left them sitting 15th out of 16.

Saturday’s home game against the Stormers is already assuming critical status if Edinburgh’s season is not to come completely off the rails before the autumn Tests roll around. “It’s such a massive game for us,” Scott conceded.

“We are not under-estimating that fact. We need to show on the pitch that we have got fight and we are not soft. I can see everyone’s very determined to do that, but I think the most important thing for us is to win this game.”