Summary
IT WASN'T a famous victory but it was a commendable performance, by some way the best since Matt Williams took over as coach. For the first time the defence was secure, and that is a big step forward. Afterwards, the Press, both in France and Britain, were very critical of the French team's lack of imagination and penetration, but, as against that, it may be that they played as well as they were permitted to play. They were subdued by aggressive defence and pinned back by accurate kicking.
Our performance was an old-fashioned one. It recalled the Scottish style either side of the year 1960: a solid front five, an eager and hard-tackling back-row and a kicking fly-half who only rarely moved the ball wide. This worked effectively on Saturday because our lineout was good, the back row magnificent, and Dan Parks kicked very well indeed. The style was also, I suppose, that of our 1990 Grand Slam game against England, and on Saturday Jon Petrie, Allister Hogg and Jason White were the equals of Fin Calder, Derek White and John Jeffrey on that famous day. Petrie, so long in Simon Taylor's shadow, can never have played a better game for Scotland, and it was unfortunate that he wasn't allowed to last the 80 minutes, all the more so because he was apparently the victim of a case of mistaken identity when given his yellow card.See the full content of this document
Extract
Strong Defence Restores Pride
Young Hogg seems to get better with every match. He too was probably unlucky in being denied his try, but really there is no point in Williams wailing about decisions that go ag...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
