Scotland’s Ewan Ashman: 'I’d trade all the tries to have won that game'

Ewan Ashman expressed mixed emotions after his historic hat-trick ultimately counted for little in Scotland’s demoralising 43-21 Nations Championship defeat at the hands of New Zealand.

The Edinburgh hooker became the first Scot – and only the fifth player ever – to notch a Test-match treble against the All Blacks in an exhilarating seven-try first half at Murrayfield which ended with the visitors leading 24-21.

But Scotland failed to score a point in the second half as the All Blacks notched three further tries to extend their unbeaten run in this fixture to 34 matches since they first met in 1905.

“Obviously, the overriding feeling is gutted that we lost, and that’s the first thing,” said Ashman. “I’d trade all the tries to have won that game.

“Obviously, if you told me when I was a wee kid that I’d get a hat-trick against the All Blacks, I’d probably take that as well.

“I’m sure when I get over the emotion of the result, I can look back at that and be proud and be buzzing.

“My family were giving it beans at the end. They maybe didn’t feel the way I did about the game.

“They’re such a quality side so it’s nice to be one of only five people to score a hat-trick against them.”

Scotland trailed by just three points at the break despite not being at their swashbuckling best. Ashman conceded his side did not do themselves justice in a second half won 19-0 by the All Blacks.

“We hadn’t played that well in the first half,” he said. “But we were cutting them open, we were scoring tries and we were being a handful.

“To know that we had more, if we came out in the second half playing as well as we could, we felt it was a game we could win, and we didn’t do that.

“We can do more, and we’ve got to do more in the next few weeks (against Australia and Japan).”

New Zealand’s seven tries came from Wallace Sititi, Ethan de Groot, Peter Lakai, Beauden Barrett (two), Josh Moorby and Asafo Aumua on a day when they honoured their long-serving head of security Logan Cadwallader, who died in Edinburgh last weekend.

“We wanted to win for him,” said All Blacks captain Codie Taylor. “This week’s been a lot bigger than rugby. It’s about acknowledging one of our brothers that had fallen and a husband and father and son, who was highly respected in our group.

“There was a lot of emotion in the anthem and looking across to the management, you could see how much they were feeling it as well. There was definitely a bit more of a motivation there to front up in the jersey.”

As a mark of respect, the All Blacks subs joined in with the pre-match Haka.

“Everyone wanted to pull the jersey on, but obviously that can’t happen,” said Taylor. “So from what I hear, their thinking was, ‘we want to be part of the Haka because we can actually pay our respects that way’. That just goes to show the connection of the group and how much Loge meant to us.”