FRONT-ROW forward Molly Wright has insisted that Scotland are not far away from finding a winning formula despite losing all four of their TikTok Six Nations games to date.
The Scots face Ireland on Saturday in their last Championship match of the season, and can take some confidence from the fact that they have already beaten the Irish this season, in World Cup qualifying. To win in Belfast, however, Wright knows her team will have to improve on two crucial areas: their discipline, which was poor in last week’s 20-13 loss to Italy; and finishing off their chances, which has been a more general problem throughout the tournament.
“I don’t think there are gaping holes in our game,” said Wright, who started at loosehead in Parma but usually plays at hooker. “I don’t think we’re taking backward steps, I just don’t think we’re finishing things off.
“It is frustrating. We know the potential this group has, so I guess this week for us is trying different things, looking at different connections, and seeing if we fix those connections in those high-pressure areas.
“That gold-zone conversion for us is pretty poor, to be honest. So that’s the thing that needs to be turned around: when we’ve got the pressure on the other team, that’s their pressure, so it’s using that to finish things off.
“We were disappointed with our discipline against Italy, and it was a talking point before the game for us that we’re moving towards being a really disciplined team and that puts a lot more pressure on other teams because we don’t give them any easy outs. We felt we gave Italy quite a lot of easy outs, so this week we want to maintain the discipline we’ve previously had and put the pressure on them.
“It was a bitterly disappointing result for us in Italy. It was another opportunity to show how we have developed and we just didn’t put in the performance that meant we could finish things off.”
Despite the frustration of recent weeks, Wright is convinced that against Ireland the team can put in the sort of performance that allows them to “finish things off”. The incentive for doing so is clear: win and they could finish as high as fourth in the final table; lose and they may well finish in their present position, sixth and last.
“I do back us this weekend. It’s about us going out there and not losing the game, and making sure that we put on a performance that we want to.”
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