A STYLISH, six-try win over Italy is such a rarity that it is surely something to celebrate, but Vern Cotter was stereotypically stern after seeing his Scotland team win 48-7 at Murrayfield.
The head coach acknowledged that quite a few things had gone right against the Italians, but insisted that with the Rugby World Cup just around the corner, the squad had to regard this result as only a single step on the way upwards.
“It’s a mixed bag,” Cotter said. “Three tries came from interceptions, so we’ll put a dose of reality on that. We weren’t particularly accurate at times.
“The positive side of things is we improved in certain sectors that we looked at last week. We had more ball than last week. We’ll need to become more accurate. There were some good things and some things to focus on.”
In fact, he did not look at all happy when he was saying that, but at least he went on to list some elements of his team’s performance that had pleased him most. “It was probably developing confidence in our driving maul from the line-out. A scrummage that had them under pressure,” Cotter explained.
“Our defensive line-out seemed to function a bit better when they went to their driven line-out. There was good communication in defence. And we managed to recover a couple of balls from applying pressure on defence.
“Those are positive aspects, but we’ll need to step it up again. We’ll be shifting fairly quickly to looking at France next week. There were a few details in the game that we’ll have to pick up on.”
Peter Horne came off after taking a knock to a knee, but there appeared to be no lasting damage. “He had a slight tweak on his knee, and we’re having a look at that,” Cotter explained.
Stuart Hogg’s participation looked in doubt when he was given a fitness test during the warm-up, but he passed that and came through the game with flying colours. “He had a twinge in his ankle but got through the game,” the coach added.
Jacques Brunel, Cotter’s counterpart, had a few more reasons to be miserable after a game in which little went right for his team. “I really don’t understand what happened today,” the Italy coach said. “I don’t understand why we changed so much from one week to the other. We had lots of problems in the scrum and conceded too many penalties. We’ll have to talk to the referee.”
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