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March 17, 2007

France have too much for Scots

Posted by Editor on March 17, 2007 08:57 PM | 3 comments | Print | E-mail author

Glasgow's Euan Murray capped a fine display with a try
Scotland coach Frank Hadden praised his players for their 'gutsy' display, despite seeing them go down to a 46-19 defeat to France.

Hadden saw his side score three tries, through Nikki Walker, Sean Lamont and Glasgow's Euan Murray at the Stade de France.

But they could not suppress the French, who went over six times themselves to all but seal their fourth RBS 6 Nations Championship in six years.

"We are disappointed with the result," he said. "We came here to win, although the better side won on the day.

"We had very relatively little to play for in this game, but we put in a gutsy performance. We ran out of steam, though, in the second half.

"Some of the French scores were fortunate but they deserved to win and to win the championship."

Hadden was happy with his side's tournament as a whole, even though they finished with a 1-4 record in the end.

"Before the start of the Six Nations, we had 14 injuries and everyone thought we were in disarray," he added.

"We ended up coming here disappointed we did not have a chance to win the title.

"We should have won our last two home games (against Italy and Ireland) and that would have given us a chance of winning the tournament."

Scotland decided not to kick for goal three times in the dying stages, preferring instead to go for tries.

They ended up going over, through Euan Murray, just before the start of injury time.

Knocking over all the penalties on offer, however, could have ruined the title hopes of France, who needed to win by 24 points to overtake Ireland in the table.

Captain Chris Paterson does not regret the strategy adopted by his side.

"We just concentrated on ourselves," said the full-back, who booted four points on the day.

"I was unaware how many points France needed to score. I was just thinking about the development of our team.

"We wanted to score tries for the benefit of the Scottish team."

Elvis Vermeulen scored the winning try for the French deep into injury time, although it needed the say-so of the video referee before it was awarded.

Paterson added: "I didn't see the grounding. One or two of our guys thought they had got the hands under the ball.

"The referee said he was sure it was a try so we accept it."

Posted by bossco85 on March 17, 2007 10:08 PM | Reply to this comment

thought we were unlcuky to be beaten by that much, we did look alot better in patches. If you read the bbc website's player ratings they seem to be a bit off from what i would of said, for starters i didnt think Parksey had a bad game atol (5 according to bbc) and Muffles was the pick of the centres, i suppose at the end of the day the better team won...and atleast england didnt win the championship!

Posted by phall on March 19, 2007 11:12 AM | Reply to this comment

L`Equipe had pretty much the same marks for DP as the BBC, 4,5 out of 10. This was the lowest of the Scottish point totals.
I didn't think so, but maybe it is the gift tae gie us.

What I do find bizarre was the number of Scots cheering on Wales and consigning us to a wooden spoon. Is that really that healthy?

Posted by Hugues on March 18, 2007 12:07 AM | Reply to this comment

A lot of work to do...
Hadden comments are a bit too much(We should ,and that would have)
"We should have won our last two home games (against Italy and Ireland) and that would have given us a chance of winning the tournament."

4 ITALY
6 Scotland

I'm really afraid that Scotland for the first time could be out of the 1/4 final in the World Cup coming.

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