TWICKENHAM has always been a hard place for a Scotland team to play but this was as bad an afternoon as I can remember in all the years I have experienced the stadium. A lot of people travelled in hope that Scotland might do something – me as well – so it was such a let-down.
I am gutted, absolutely gutted at the way it turned out, not only did Scotland not rise to all our hopes but they gave away all sorts of unwanted statistics – a record score by England, a record losing margin and so on.
Now the task of the leading players and coaches is to find ways to make sure that it does not have a fatal effect on confidence; they have to get their mojo back in time for next week's game against Italy. Remember, Italy have not won a game yet but we have won two against decent sides and have to take confidence from that.
I know the character of the squad is strong and if a few of the boys who went off injured can recover in time for next week, I don't see any reason they cannot finish with a flourish and consign this to a nightmare day at the office.
Make no mistake. The Italians will head for Murrayfield thinking they can win. They will look at the performance and the injuries in the Scotland squad and feel things are running in their favour. They will look at the hiding Scotland got – so much worse than their result at the same venue – and there will be no fear factor in Edinburgh.
The players will never forget this – nor should they – but have to try to look at the mistakes and sort them out. They can't afford to make the same errors that they did out at Twickenham but can take comfort from the fact that next week, against Italy, they won't be under the same pressure. You don't become a bad team overnight.
I have been there, and losing by that kind of margin stings badly. It is worse, though, if you don't learn from it, come back and become a better team for the experience. It is a tough, tough way to learn but that is the only thing left to do, but Twickenham is a tough place to come and win, as I well know.
There were two big problems for Scotland. The first was the error count. It covered everything. Defensively they were weak, the line speed was not nearly as good as it has been in the past. England did some good stuff but Alex Dunbar missed a bad tackle to start off with and after that they just kept running in easy scores and that got them into a rhythm.
Discipline was poor as well with far too many penalties giving them easy field position and that was not helped by a poor kicking game. Finn Russell missing touch, kicked out on the full, and got a charge down.
The second issue was that England stopped Scotland getting the quick ball they need. On the few times they could build up the tempo, some good tries came; it is still a team that can score. With slow, ball, however they looked devoid of ideas and ended out kicking too much of it away, giving them easy ball to run back.
They did generate a lot of possession but a lot of that was slow, meaning that even when they were in the England half, they did not make much of it.
Take nothing away from England; they were good. That is the best they have played in last few games. I was very impressed with them even though Scotland were made too many mistakes. You can't afford to do that against a powerful team like that.
It was hard for the players. Injuries meant they were patching things up from early on, with Duncan Weir on one wing ad Ali Price on the other but that did not excuse the poor thinking and execution from the rest.
Positives? Not a lot. The scrum was okay and we did they did score three tries and came close to a a scoring bonus point, but that is about it. Huw Jones looked sharp when he got the ball in space.
The only thing to do is, work out who is available, remember that they did score those good tries and get on with putting the rest right.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel