Six Nations: Lack of tries ‘frustrating as hell’

THERE was an almost funereal air to last night’s post-match postmortem with Scotland’s players. In each corner there would be a disconsolate soul trying to explain to the assembled media why the home side had been foiled once again.

It felt like we had just witnessed the burial of Scotland’s Six Nations hopes for yet another year, but this was no wake. There was a sorrow to each of the players’ accounts that was incapable of being drowned.

Max Evans was among the more thoughtful, but more maudlin, of the Scotland players. An articulate soul, he was able to put into words exactly what it felt like to lose a match when the stats are so heavily in your favour that the match should have been a foregone conclusion. After all, Scotland completed 238 passes to England’s 72, won 113 rucks to England’s 44, only had to make 62 tackles to England’s 142. On paper it looks like a massacre, until you come to the numbers which confirm that a heavily outgunned England won 13-6, courtesy of a charged-down Dan Parks clearance kick.

“It’s terrible coming off the pitch feeling like we’ve played all the rugby and losing; very disappointing,” said Evans. “You’ve got to give a lot of credit to them and their defence, but not to go away with any tries was very hard to take. We should have come away with points more often, there were definitely chances there and we have to take them. To come out after a good effort in the first half – although I thought we should have been further ahead at the break – and then we concede points immediately, that hurts. They weren’t posing much of a threat and we handed them an easy try.”

Evans at least proffered some sort of remedy for a try-drought so chronic that this is the fourth consecutive match where Scotland have failed to score a try, and the fourth successive Murrayfield Calcutta Cup encounter where Scotland have failed to score a try.

“I’m not going to lie, yes [the lack of tries is starting to get inside our heads],” he said. “It’s frustrating as hell, especially as a back. But it’s something that’s fixable, especially when you see the opportunities we did have and realise the inches that are the difference between scoring and not scoring.

“We can’t blame anyone but ourselves, but it’s definitely in our minds all the time now. We’re not overthinking things, but we may be overdoing things. We’re trying to play a high-tempo game and at times players will get tired and need a rest but we’re trying to carry on playing a fast game and sometimes guys end up on their own. But there’s no point pointing fingers.”

That, of course, won’t stop those who have been doing exactly that and pointing the finger at attack coach Gregor Townsend. Robinson has acted by hiring the Ospreys’ experienced coach Scott Johnson to augment his coaching team, but the little Aussie doesn’t set foot north of the Border until the summer, and there’s the small matter of a trip to Cardiff long before then. Although there were also signs of hope in the impressive of Six Nations debutants David Denton, Lee Jones and Greig Laidlaw, players like Evans weren’t in the mood to look for a silver lining in the hour after the game.

Asked what the atmosphere in the dressing room was like, Evans grimaced. “Just gutted, we’re all just gutted,” he said. “There was lots of talk about [getting our] heads up, but it’s very difficult to pick yourself up straight after a defeat like that when you’ve just been pumped. In the past we’ve waited until the end of the tournament before we delivered but this time our backs were to the wall and we didn’t deliver, but we’ve just got to get up and go for Wales.

“We’re all far too passionate about what we do for a living to be all chirpy and to come in here all smiles and laughing after we’ve just been beaten by an England team that we ought to have beaten. It’s all very well losing to a team that deserves to win, to get beaten by a better team, but when you lose to a team and you know you should have won it’s so much more difficult. We let this match slip from our grasp. It’s pretty devastating really.”

If Evans was downhearted, he was in good company. If the backs perhaps felt a mite shifty, the forwards were just bemused that a match which they felt they dominated could end in defeat.

“I’m just very disappointed to not get the win after creating so much and having the best of the game,” said Richie Gray, who put in a huge display of ball-carrying and ball-winning. “We dominated the set-piece and backs were penetrating and forwards were penetrating, so it’s tough. We just need to keep our heads, and there were some positives: David [Denton] and Lee [Jones] were phenomenal; Jonty showed how dangerous he was and David just carried ball and carried ball all afternoon.”

Perhaps the only person who didn’t seem to be downbeat and down in the dumps was Laidlaw, the Edinburgh utility halfback who entered the fray to such spectacular effect as the match reached its denouement.

It would be tempting to think that it was because he put in such a compelling performance that it would be impossible not to start him in Cardiff next week, but that wasn’t the case,. Instead, he was angry. “I touched it down, got the first hand to it,” he said of the moment when he and Ben Youngs both landed on his grubber at the same time. “It was a try.”

Unfortunately the record books will say otherwise. And they’ll also record that a fledgling England side with seven new caps beat a side they had no right to have overcome. If Scotland can’t begin to score tries, that is a reality with which they will become increasingly familiar.