After last week's heroics Scotland are frozen out

Follow that, everyone said, after what will surely go down as one of our all-time greatest performances. Ah but we’re Scotland, the fatalists cried. The day our ship finally comes in we’ll have gone to the airport by mistake.

Hamish Watson sparks the first Scotland break by pouncing on lineout ball and feeding Finn Russell

And now that England had been mastered - and indeed sent to “think again” about strategy and philosophy and the wisdom of fielding dangerous attackers who then don’t touch the ball for more than an hour - it was Wales.

The Welsh “under reconstruction”. The Welsh striving for form and momentum. The Welsh with an opening-weekend win too though it was against 14 men and so not conclusive. The Welsh not talking about a Grand Slam while here some romantic fools haven’t been able to stop themselves. It sounded like a banana skin, or perhaps a leek designed to trip us up on a perishingly cold evening.

What we needed, then, was a man who plays instinctively, impulsively, intensely. Someone whose motto is: “I tackle therefore I am.” Someone who doesn’t think about the big picture, just the next big backside he can bring crashing to the turf. Someone like Hamish Watson.

The first thing Watson did yesterday was run onto a line throw and feed Finn Russell. This wasn’t as epic or as beautiful as the last thing he did at Twickenham - wrestle the ball from English arms like it was a mighty sword and welly it into touch to end the game - but still, not a bad start, and something to take our minds of the strangeness of it all at Murrayfield yesterday.

If you were looking for a sporting fixture to best illustrate a marked contrast between pre-Covid and now, Scotland vs Wales would be a prime contender. A gigantic crowd of 104,000 once mustered here - and 50 years ago the place surged and swayed to the hectic rhythms of the fantastic 19-18 game - but yesterday there was just eerie emptiness.

At least Watson was, as usual, charging around with that conspicuous headband, an item that’s become almost a votive object for this Scotland team and their hopes and dreams. Underneath it, flowing madly, was his hair. The man tackles like a threshing machine and gives the impression he uses one on his rug.

Post-Twickers, fellow back-rower Ryan Wilson tweeted a photo of Watson superimposed on Mel “Braveheart” McGibson: “It can be tough out there being an Englishman in the beautiful Scottish jersey … barnet is helping him blend in!”

But Manchester-born Watson didn’t have the free run of Murrayfield. He was up against a Welshman of Croatian descent in Justin Tipuric, equally combative and streetwise. Furthermore, Tipuric wasn’t just a challenger in this game but also for the No 7 shirt for the British and Irish Lions, should the tour to South Africa ever happen.

In his aquamarine skullcap Tipuric was just as noticable and in the duel of the opensides he made the first carry. But Watson would have a hand in the first try, sparking the next phase after a rampaging run from Jonny Gray, which enabled Ali Price to chip into space behind the Wales backs for Darcy Graham to nip over the line.

This was good to see and not just for the obvious reason because you felt for wingers in such Baltic conditions. The packs could grapple with each other for mutual warmth and Watson and Tupuric, if they’d fancied, could have re-staged the famous Oliver Reed-Alan Bates wrestling scene from Women in Love for the express reason of keeping the blood from freezing and everyone would have understood. But it wasn’t a day for being stuck out on your own on the flank for long periods and there was a moment before his try when Graham seemed almost grateful to be checked and have two burly Welshmen smother him.

Scotland, in the middle period of the first half were smothering Wales and if Watson was less conspicuous than last week it was because the ball wasn’t spending long in the rucks and the runners had taken charge. The back three were all prominent in the attacks but there seemed an inevitability about the ebullient Stuart Hogg grabbing the second try.

Wales surged back into the contest before the break and slick handling produced a try for Louis Rees-Zammit. As he’d been their winger most under threat from frostbite, it seemed like basic humanity to feel pleased for him. No one in this deep-frozen encounter deserved the fate of England’s Ollie Lawrence, denied the ball and any meaningful involvement for 63 minutes.

If you were Scottish you were probably feeling slightly less charitable when the other Welsh winger, Liam Williams, finished off another compelling move by the visitors early in the second half. Soon after that the Red Dragons took the lead and the game, if nothing else in the vicinity of EH12, was really heating up.

Hogg plunged for another cracking try but was outdone by Rees-Zammit’s second, a real blockbuster involving a gallop from a few yards inside Scotland’s half and a boot ahead perfectly weighted for him to restore his team’s advantage.

The clock was ticking - were Wales on the 50th anniversary of 19-18 going to triumph by a single point again? There was just time for two more crucial moments: a Hogg slip in full flight, then in overtime the ball squirting from the same player’s cold, cold hands.

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