March 12, 2006

No happy road trip for Scots

Posted by Editor on March 12, 2006 11:07 AM | 2 comments | Print | E-mail author

Andy Henderson was one of Scotland's better performers
Scotland coach Frank Hadden says his players need to make more of their possession if they are to "crack the nut" of winning away.

Scotland went down 15-9 to Ireland in a dour game at Lansdowne Road. They have failed to win on their Six Nations travels since beating Italy in 2002 and Hadden knows they need to be more ruthless in when they have the ball if they are to record victory in Rome next weekend.

He said: "We were very well aware that to crack the nut of winning away from home we are going to have to execute with a lot more accuracy next weekend.

"The disappointment was we didn't execute enough when we had the ball and that was the difference between winning and losing."

But Hadden still heaped praise on his improving side despite only having three penalties from Chris Paterson to show for.

He added: "I thought today was another magnificent effort from our lads.

"The spirit, the commitment, tenacity and passion were very much in evidence again today."

Hadden also thought his side could snatch their first win in Ireland since 1998 with an improvement in the second period.

He added: "Throughout the game we were always close enough in the scoreboard and I actually felt we weren't going to continue to play so poorly and would actually turn it around and execute it better."

He added: "It was a tough toss to lose early on with Ireland having the advantage.

"They had the wind in the second half and the quality of kicking from Ronan O'Gara and the back three meant we were doing everything very deep in our own territory.

"Probably on the balance we didn't deserve to to win but there were one or two areas where we didn't get the rub of the green either."

But Hadden admits he must drill his forwards at the lineouts this week after another poor show.

He said: "We only won a 22 out of our 30 lineouts and that's definitely something we need to address and do better in that area.

"It's small consolation that it is a slight improvement on the last few week. But we have to do better in that area."

Comments
Posted by hugues on March 13, 2006 11:56 AM | Reply to this comment

I don't want to say the Scots lost because "off site" but the Irish were so often...
In the tournament there are a lot of "off site" not wistled by the refs.
Maybe they don't have the time to notice them, but the refs from the touch could help more

Posted by Les on March 13, 2006 05:34 PM | Reply to this comment

Lineout and good forward possession was sorely lacking in atrocious conditions. The backs, when they did get the ball didn't have the cutting edge to really threaten and we latterly kicked away too much ball particularly given the lack of lineout presence. However, I can safely report that a poor 80 minutes did not spoil an otherwise excellent weekend!!

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