At the end of the Autumn Internationals I wrote in an article for the site that “Scotland fans already know that it’s not the despair that kills you, it’s the hope”. Never has that been more true than the swing of emotions Scotland fans felt between 4pm and 6pm on Saturday. Almost the whole Rugby world felt that Scotland were an ascending team who at the very least would be able to give their World Record / Grand Slam chasing rivals a proper test of their credentials. Instead 80 mins of incisive attack from England and almost comically bad Scottish defending from first phase exposed a gulf in class and depth at key positions that we had all been almost wilfully blind to in the run-up to the game.
Worse still, I had been taken in by the hope so much that I decided to spend Saturday afternoon / evening at my Local RFC surrounded by 50-60 increasingly, triumphal, patronising and well lubricated of my fellow players / coaches and members. That led to me spending two hours on Sunday writing a 1000 word rant blaming, useless officials, biased TV coverage, random injuries and Eddie Jones’s dog for Scotland’s misfortunes that will never see the light of day. Hopefully Big Vern Cotter will have the sense to throw the tape of this match in the bin and concentrate on patching a team together to face Italy out of duct tape and baler twine, unfortunately I have to write some player ratings. This might not be pretty.
1. Gordon Reid – 5
The scrum went better for Scotland than most people might have expected and he did well to finish off the first try that kept hope flickering towards half time. Other than that, not much from the Reading bound prop
2. Fraser Brown – 3
The Glasgow hooker started the rot with a poorly timed tackle that these days is a yellow card (or possibly red now that the citing commissioner has had a peek). It’s a waste of breath to moan that that is exactly how kids are taught to tackle from u9s upwards. Its only because of the brute strength of professionals that it is even possible to dump an onrushing players back on their head/neck like that. Also missed a couple of throws and got on the wrong side of the referee on the floor.
3. Zander Fagerson – 5
Stood up pretty well in the scrum, but that might just be because England decided to play with good first phase ball. Looked good carrying ball.
4. Richie Gray – 5
Stood up pretty well to the big English ball carriers and made an impressive 15 tackles but meanwhile the damage was being done elsewhere. No impact on the English lineout
5. Jonny Gray – 4
A lot of Jonny’s work is unseen but on Saturday he was just anonymous. At no point did Scotland mange to slow down the lightning fast English ruck ball. Missed TWO tackles
6. John Barclay – 5
Stood proudly on the bridge as the ship burned around him. Could not have put in more personal effort and grew visibly frustrated at the “inconsistencies” of Matthieu Reynal.
7. Hamish Watson – 5
Made an outstanding 19 tackles but was never able to get over the ball (at least not legally in the opinion of the referee) in the way he did against Wales. I got the feeling England targeted him with their ball carriers to stop him jackaling.
8. Ryan Wilson – 4
Wilson got what looked like a stinger in the first half and had a pretty negligible impact on the game from then on.
9. Ali Price – n/a
Ended up on the wing by the 23rd minute, not really fair to grade him on that game.
10. Finn Russell – 4 – Some good things, some howlingly bad things. Glasgow fans will recognise that occasionally this happens with Finn. Its just something we will have to put up with as he matures
11. Tim Visser – 5
Some nice line breaks but not able to keep the ball alive each time.
12. Alex Dunbar – 2
Clearly the Scottish game plan was to have Dunbar running at Ford as much as possible. It probably wasn’t the plan to have him standing like a statue in midfield as England tore through his defence 3 times in 20 minutes. Will be embarrassed by this performance.
13. Huw Jones – 5
Two well taken tries showcased his huge potential going forward but he can’t avoid his responsibility for the midfield chaos in the first half.
14. Tommy Seymour – 4
I think 3 critical points have to be remembered when deciding the make up of the bench. 1.Tommy Seymour is not a full back. 2. Tommy Seymour cannot cover full back. 3. It is very important to have back 3 cover on the bench.
15. Stuart Hogg – n/a
Jogged off on 23 mins looking for all the world like he would be returning after a cursory HIA. Instead a head shot from Itoje that was criminally undercovered by ITV led to Scotland losing the best attacking player in the Championship so far. With him went any faint hopes of the visitors clawing their way back into the match.
Replacements
No finishers for Scotland, just a bunch of emergency replacements playing out of position trying to limit the bleeding in the second half. I though Dell was reasonably bright around the park and Pyrgos martialled some very deliberate attacking play from the forwards but with Scotland’s ball being glacially slow all match there was no real chance to shine.
By Stephen Smith
Sorry but your assessment of Brown’s tackle is utter guff.
A poorly timed tackle may well not be cause for a yellow card (see Nathan Hughes in the same game), however a tackle which needlessly took the player’s legs past horizontal, with said player then driven into the floor highly warrants a yellow card and in my opinion, given the total lack of regard for the safety of the player, a red (not withstanding the World Rugby law as to where the player lands…head…neck…back etc).
U9s are not taught to drive their opposition into the floor and risk a serious injury so sorry but again your comments here are utter drivel.
In complete agreement. U9s are not taught that way. I say that as a qualified coach who specializes in U9-U13 age range.
Children are taught to go ‘cheek to cheek’ (bum cheek to face cheek!) and then to drop their arms in a ‘ring of steel’ to take out the ankles of the oncoming player.
This is the first article on Rugby Blog I’ve read that smacks of sour grapes…
Hi Egg Chaser – Thanks for the feedback.
I don’t think I argued that it wasn’t a yellow card, it clearly was according to the World Rugby guidance given to referees (myself included). Indeed depending on how you see the footage it might even be a red if the citing commissioner decides that Daly landed on his head / neck.
My point was that form u9s upwards we teach a specific technique for head on tackles on order to avoid injury to the tackler. Brown’s approach, impact point and follow through echoed that technique. The difference is that u9s are mostly skinny kids and they will generally don’t have the power to drive their man backwards (although it does happen sometimes).
Unfortunately in this case there are some inevitable outcomes when two 16 stone plus men moving at high speed collide. In this case Brown was moving forward and better anchored, Daly was slightly unbalanced having just made the pass and inevitably went backwards violently under the force of the tackle. His legs clearly went above the horizontal and Brown was on top of him as he did so.
World rugby has decided to punish outcomes and not intent so its a Yellow Card.
My preference would be to radically lower the acceptable impact point to waist height or below which would eliminate the possibility of outcome like this and IMHO make the game quicker and more attractive by eliminating the choke tackle / maul and would also encourage more offloading.
I think you should re-watch the tackle, painful as it may be.
Brown hits Daly and instead of driving through and taking him down to the ground, he drives upwards, lifting Daly’s legs and rotating them to drive him down. Nothing to do with the force of the tackle, everything to do with Brown driving upwards whilst lifting and turning.
No one is taught to tackle like that nowadays. And even if they were, Brown is a professional rugby player, not an under 9 child. He knows, or should know, what the rules are.
As for your argument as to this is what happens when pros tackle in this kind of situation – of course that’s not true. Were it so, we would have tip tackles ocurring multiple times in every match.
Far more likely is that Brown was overly pumped up, went into the tackle too aggressively trying to assert himself and took it too far.
BTW as for the ‘inconsistencies’ of Reynal – I thought he was entirely clear, shouting when players should leave the ball alone, etc. The difference is England listened to him. Scotland thought they knew better, kept on doing it and were rightly penalised for it.
I have a number of issues with what still seems a bitter reaction that serves the Scottish team no good.
1. Brown’s tackle was deserving of a red, if it had happened on 30 minutes it would have been.
2. This was pretty much the only mistake the officiating team made. The teamwork was exemplary typified by the TMO correcting the ref when he was going to card Nathan Hughes. Because of this I’m confident they looked at the ‘high shot’ by Itoje and correctly ascertained that it wasn’t a penalty.
3. To castigate Scotland for their poor performance is slightly unfair. Yes they were poor, but they were made to look poor by an English performance that no team in world rugby, and I include the All Black’s, would have withstood. (That’s not to say England are better than the Abs, just that performance was that good.)
Ironically I think this wasn’t as bad as result for Scotland as is being made out. A dose of reality that will dampen expectation a little bit. But Scotland have shown an ability to compete with and beat the teams around them which they struggled to do even two or three seasons ago. Ok, they can’t yet compete with the very best, but that’s not to say they won’t very soon.
Also, having coached kids rugby myself, if you are coaching kids to tackle like Fraser Brown did you best hand your coaching qualifications back. You are not fit to do so.
Hi Will T
Thanks for the feedback. Again I would make the point that I have no argument that it was a yellow card. It very clearly is a yellow and could potentially have been a red as it is very marginal that Daly lands on his back.
Believe me, for the last 4 years I have been saying “cheek to cheek” and “ring of steel” every Sunday morning. Unfortunately not all tackles are side on, Brown was making a head on tackle so I would also tell my kids to get into a “tower of power” get their head to the correct side, hit with their shoulder at waist height and “chase their feet” . All things that Brown did.
Jez
All I would say is that this was an article assessing Scotland’s performance not England’s. There is already an excellent article on the site reviewing the best England attacking performance I have seen in a few years. Scotland were poor compared to their recent performances.
Also, the high shot on Hogg was penalised by the referee but no further action.
This is definitely the worst piece I’ve read on this website. Don’t know if you were deliberately being provocative, but the bitterness in your comments is quite pathetic.
The worst of these is your criticism of the ref, whose only real mistake arguably was not showing a red card to Fraser Brown, who has no-one to blame but himself.
Barclay showed himself to be not captain material in his interactions with the referee and Russell (as you correctly pointed out) showed again that he doesn’t have the temperament to make good decisions under pressure.
I’ll make one concession here: it did seem odd not to have more scrutiny of the Itoje/Haskell hit on Hogg. It’s not really clear to me though whether Hogg’s head injury was caused by Haskell’s forearm (I don’t think so, looks like very minimal contact, if at all), banging his head on the ground (quite likely but not clear from the footage), or Gray’s knee (looks the most likely to me, but again it’s hard to tell for sure from the video):