Iain Morrison: No case for the defence as Six Nations stats tell the story

Published on Friday 4 March 2011 20:06

Iain Morrison says the collapse of Scotland's defence is undermining the progress made by Andy Robinson's side

Perhaps Scotland can take some comfort from the Ireland match after all. Not the rugby match of last Sunday, the World Cup cricket match in Bangalore! If Ireland can beat England at 50-over cricket then suddenly the odds facing Andy Robinson's team don't look quite so imposing.

Ahead of this Six Nations the prospect of a trip to Twickenham was not one to cause sleepless nights but all that has changed in the space of a few weeks. Now, with the Scots winless (and England undefeated), the travelling fans are looking forward to damage limitation and enough beer to dull the pain.

Despite a rousing 2010 there are a host of reasons why Scotland have failed to win a Six Nations match to date but chief amongst them is the rather obvious point that the players are playing poorly. Only Richie Gray and Sean Lamont can claim to have improved on last season's form, Kelly Brown and Mike Blair are doing OK but still operating well below their best while the rest of the squad are apparently dreaming of better times rather than making them happen.

Nowhere is this more evident than in defence. The hallmark of a Robinson side is that it is damned difficult to beat. Without a sticky, determined, stonewall defence anything and everything else is so much hot air and more so for this Scotland team than any other. If you can't score tries - and this team haven't managed one at Murrayfield for eight matches or, put another way, the time it takes to watch Ben Hur back-to-back three times and still have time to buy ice cream and popcorn in between every reel - you had better not concede many.

Instead of acting like Scrooge with a toothache, this team are handing out tries like treats at Halloween; they can't give them away fast enough.

Whenever the opposition get into the 22 they score and they do so without breaking sweat. Irish scrum-half Eoin Reddan is still pinching himself to make sure he isn't dreaming.

Yet, under Robinson's supervision Edinburgh and Scotland (last year's version anyway) made a virtue of soaking up pressure in defence. They lapped it up, taking whatever punishment came their way with all the stoicism of David Sole, who berated one Englishman who'd smacked him in the face with the line "is that all you've got?" It was almost masochistic in its nature and yet it worked because teams that hammer away and get no reward for all their efforts invariably retreat with their self-belief undermined.

Robinson is asking his players to expand their game, to lift their horizons but you have to wonder if this side has the speed and skills to play that type of game, especially in the absence of Graeme Morrison.

Maybe it's better to be good at what you do rather than be ordinary at something just beyond your competence.

Perhaps the players are so concerned with the where, when and who to attack with the ball in hand that they have forgotten that the most important aspect of rugby is to make the opposition sweat blood for every point. The statistics highlight the problem.

Last year in Dublin the Scots missed four tackles all match for a completion rate (tackles made/tackles missed) of 94 per cent. Last Sunday, much the same team against much the same opposition missed 12 tackles for a completion rate of 89 per cent. Ireland's figures went in the opposite direction - 86 per cent made in 2010 and 96 per cent last Sunday.

If Scotland miss 12 tackles at Twickenham we'll all be in the bar by half time. Robinson needs to tighten the nuts and bolts of this team before he worries about what to do with the ball in hand.

And, on that front, the experiment of picking Ruaridh Jackson as playmaker is as yet unproven. The Glasgow man overdid the Garryowens but ignore his kicking for a moment because that's not what he is there for. All too often the youngster did exactly what Dan Parks does: stand deep, slide sideways and gobble up precious space before firing out a pass to some poor fool on the outside with nowhere to go. On the basis that you don't buy a dog and howl at the moon yourself, Jackson needs to attack the gain line because that is why he was picked.

If your stand-off is going to stand deep and crab across the field, he might as well be called Dan Parks since you at least get the added extras that the Aussie brings with him - communication, confidence, game management and the ability to drill the ball deep into the corners.

In fact Parks even made one half-chance late in the game when he took the ball to the line and popped inside to Nick De Luca who fed outside to Moray Low.

Scotland's main problem is no nearer being solved. Does Robinson try to move the squad forward with the younger man or accept the its limitations and ask Parks to do a holding job?

In a way it's irrelevant because, without the foundation of a concrete defence, it's difficult to know where the Scots will have a competitive advantage next Sunday, although they will start as uncontested underdogs. Only at the lineout, where Richie Gray's pick-pocketing puts Fagin's lot to shame, do they look to have an edge. At least Andrew Sheridan is out of action, which may make scrum time a little easier and Robinson may be tempted to throw more muscle into the mix by playing Nathan Hines at six.

In the backs Joe Ansbro should start if he comes through Northampton's match against Exeter this afternoon and it would be good to see Sean Lamont shifted back to full-back where he made such an impact against Wales. He didn't do a bad job at inside centre but his instinct is always to run with the ball and, while you admire his enthusiasm, you wish it was augmented by some vision.

That would probably leave Max Evans on one wing and Simon Danielli on the other after the Ulster player impressed off the bench, however briefly. He competes for the high ball better than Nikki Walker, who was stepped by Keith Earls deep inside the Irish 22 in much the same way as Francois Trinh Duc beat him in Paris.

Once can be called a mistake, twice looks careless... but you could say the same about so much of Scotland's error-strewn play this season. Only if every player in blue brings their Sunday best to Twickenham will Scotland have any hope of emulating Ireland's cricketers and upsetting long, long odds.

TACKLES MADE

WALES 372

ITALY 344

IRELAND 324

ENGLAND 306

FRANCE 292

SCOTLAND 290

MISSED TACKLES

SCOTLAND 32

FRANCE 29

ITALY 26

WALES 22

IRELAND 12

ENGLAND 11

TACKLE COMPLETION

ENGLAND 97%

IRELAND 96%

WALES 94%

ITALY 93%

FRANCE 91%

SCOTLAND 90%