Rugby Union

[John Lambies Doos]

Only one team wins any tournament; everybody else has the story of how they lost. You think that list is bad, you should see Italy's. And for a pretty small country, we do alright.

We didn't lose yesterday, it was a brilliant comeback away from home against a top side.

We didn't lose at Hampden in 2017, with possibly the biggest gulf between the sides in the history of the fixture.

Andy Murray, Jamie Murray, Chris Hoy, Laura Muir, Kathrine Grainger - all among our recent world beaters. Our cricket team beat England last year. Our women's football team are a top seed in Europe.

We do alright. We could and should do better, especially in men's football, but we're above par.

Problem is all these mentioned represented GB not Scotland... Just saying. There is certainly something in our DNA. However, Highland Magyar showed what an absolute self loathing c**t he was last night.

[topcat(The most tip top)]

Tbf there is not much you can do when the umpires are at it and the ICC help them out by not having DRS in play.

And at least we beat England

[Mark Connolly]

13 hours ago, ajwffc said:

Missed the game as I fell asleep just after it started so have not seen the game. But I now don't have to think of a new profile pic for upto another 12 months as we keep the Calcutta Cup

Swap it for the gold one in November.

[effeffsee_the2nd]

2 hours ago, GordonS said:

Only one team wins any tournament; everybody else has the story of how they lost. You think that list is bad, you should see Italy's. And for a pretty small country, we do alright.

We didn't lose yesterday, it was a brilliant comeback away from home against a top side.

We didn't lose at Hampden in 2017, with possibly the biggest gulf between the sides in the history of the fixture.

Andy Murray, Jamie Murray, Chris Hoy, Laura Muir, Kathrine Grainger - all among our recent world beaters. Our cricket team beat England last year. Our women's football team are a top seed in Europe.

We do alright. We could and should do better, especially in men's football, but we're above par.

maybe so , & in absolute sporting terms yestardays  result was very good for Scotland however you cant help but feel we are a nation of losers at heart

[pandarilla]

This was the rugby equivelant of the Scotland 2 England 2 at Hampden a couple years ago. 

We never deserved to take the lead at Hampden though, that was jammy as f**k.

Yesterday in the second half we tore those yuppy b*****ds a new arsehole, and they couldn't stop us.

[topcat(The most tip top)]

This was the rugby equivelant of the Scotland 2 England 2 at Hampden a couple years ago. 

It’s an all time international record for highest scoring draw and biggest lead surrendered

It’s more like the Soviet Union coming back from 5-1 down to draw 5-5 with Yugoslavia at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952

[pandarilla]

It’s an all time international record for highest scoring draw and biggest lead surrendered

It’s more like the Soviet Union coming back from 5-1 down to draw 5-5 with Yugoslavia at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952

Yeah that's what I was thinking [emoji53]

[GordonS]

maybe so , & in absolute sporting terms yestardays  result was very good for Scotland however you cant help but feel we are a nation of losers at heart

There's definitely a strain in the Scottish mentality that says "you'll never be good enough" and I think it cost Andy Murray a few grand slams. He didn't believe he was on the same level as the others in the big 4. He was right, but being conscious of it caused a few bottle crashes against them in the early years. Contrast that with Wawrinka who got three chances in his whole career and took them all. I think that until recently Andy didn't see himself as a peer of the second rank greats like Edberg and Becker, even though he definitely is.

So yeah, there's something in that. But we don't all have it and I'm sure Finn Russell and Ali Price don't!

[GordonS]

It’s an all time international record for highest scoring draw and biggest lead surrendered

It’s more like the Soviet Union coming back from 5-1 down to draw 5-5 with Yugoslavia at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952

It would be if it were between two huge rivals, in a competition that sport took seriously worldwide, and if the trailing team had come back to lead 6-5 before being pulled back to 6-6 in injury time.

[Detournement]

I just watched the game back. The first half is horrible with the defensive line shooting out, biting on dummy runners and missing tackles all over the place. The second half was amazing with lots of big performances. Russell obviously but Bradbury was immense and should be our 8 going forward. Maitland was superb at 15 and Toolis had his best showing in a blue jersey. Hamish Watson was his usual self and did some amount of organising.

There will be real competition to get into the 31 man squad for the World Cup. Guys like Seymour, Kinghorn, Toolis, Richie Gray, Jamie Ritchie, Ryan Wilson, Matt Fagerson, Adam Hastings will have to step up before the end of the season. There will be good players left at home and I think that John Barclay's time has passed sadly.

My team for Ireland Dell, McInally, Fagerson, R Gray, J Gray, Skinner, Watson, Bradbury, Price, Russell, Maitland, Johnson, Jones, Graham, Hogg. Subs Reid, Brown, Berghan, Gilchrist, Wilson, Laidlaw, Hastings, Harris

 

[effeffsee_the2nd]

There's definitely a strain in the Scottish mentality that says "you'll never be good enough" and I think it cost Andy Murray a few grand slams. He didn't believe he was on the same level as the others in the big 4. He was right, but being conscious of it caused a few bottle crashes against them in the early years. Contrast that with Wawrinka who got three chances in his whole career and took them all. I think that until recently Andy didn't see himself as a peer of the second rank greats like Edberg and Becker, even though he definitely is.

So yeah, there's something in that. But we don't all have it and I'm sure Finn Russell and Ali Price don't!

Aye the bit about murray v wawrinka was where im coming from, we are a small country but a first world one so we accept that we will go through spells of sporting mediocrity due to the numbers. That bit is understood.
What we are howling at is being able to make the most of when we do have a few decent players ( rugby and fitbaw) and abit of momentum. After all there are many other nations our size who are able to take chances when they come along but we seem to be serial bottle merchants

[topcat(The most tip top)]

It would be if it were between two huge rivals, in a competition that sport took seriously worldwide, and if the trailing team had come back to lead 6-5 before being pulled back to 6-6 in injury time.

 

It was the closest thing i could find in international football and the Yugoslavs did win the replay so the comeback had an even nastier sting

 

we could go with Hungary 5-5 Austria 1928. That, like the Calcutta cup, is the most played football rivalry in Europe and second in the world (Argentina vs Uruguay and the Bledisloe cup being the most played) but Hungary never got more than two goals ahead so it doesn’t have the big comeback.

 

There are a couple of other 5-5 draws

 

Netherlands 5-5 Germany in 1912 although that was only the 3rd meeting I cant find the scorers and the game was very much in its infancy there. Germany had recently lost 9-0 to England’s amateurs.

 

And Netherlands 5-5 Belgium 1999 a friendly where both teams led twice

 

In truth it’s going to be very difficult to find anything genuinely like that game in any international sport anywhere at any point in history.

 

And the fact that it was such an unusual and unprecedented event means we should probably not try to read to much into it never mind make pronouncements on the character of entire nations.

 

What we have learned though is

 

1: That when Townsend’s Scotland are flowing well they‘re a match for anybody

 

2: when things don’t work out for Scotland it can get very messy very quickly .

 

3: We broke England at Murrayfield a year ago and they’re still broken.

 

We pretty much knew all these things already but it’s good to be reminded of the first and last.

 

 

[peasy23]

 

It was the closest thing i could find in international football and the Yugoslavs did win the replay so the comeback had an even nastier sting

 

we could go with Hungary 5-5 Austria 1928. That, like the Calcutta cup, is the most played football rivalry in Europe and second in the world (Argentina vs Uruguay and the Bledisloe cup being the most played) but Hungary never got more than two goals ahead so it doesn’t have the big comeback.

 

There are a couple of other 5-5 draws

 

Netherlands 5-5 Germany in 1912 although that was only the 3rd meeting I cant find the scorers and the game was very much in its infancy there. Germany had recently lost 9-0 to England’s amateurs.

 

And Netherlands 5-5 Belgium 1999 a friendly where both teams led twice

 

In truth it’s going to be very difficult to find anything genuinely like that game in any international sport anywhere at any point in history.

 

And the fact that it was such an unusual and unprecedented event means we should probably not try to read to much into it never mind make pronouncements on the character of entire nations.

 

What we have learned though is

 

1: That when Townsend’s Scotland are flowing well they‘re a match for anybody

 

2: when things don’t work out for Scotland it can get very messy very quickly .

 

3: We broke England at Murrayfield a year ago and they’re still broken.

 

We pretty much knew all these things already but it’s good to be reminded of the first and last.

 

 

 

Point 2 of the 3 is the scariest one with the world cup looming large. I think Scotland's defence bought every dummy run in the first half yesterday and got torn apart as a result. Finn's comments were also a bit worrying about the chat with Toony at half time, sounded to me that the players weren't completely sold on the tactics they were asked to use in the first half.

 

[Savage Henry]

 
Point 2 of the 3 is the scariest one with the world cup looming large. I think Scotland's defence bought every dummy run in the first half yesterday and got torn apart as a result. Finn's comments were also a bit worrying about the chat with Toony at half time, sounded to me that the players weren't completely sold on the tactics they were asked to use in the first half.
 

Townsend as a player was like that. He was head and shoulders above any other Western Hemisphere 10 at his best, but on his off days, he would look an utter diddy. He always tried too much, but when it worked, it worked. One day, Scotland will hammer somebody very decent. But they’ll more often look like they’ve never played before.

None of that has much to do with the porous defence though. That’s just incompetent coaching.

[ajwffc]

 

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

The stupidity of giving away a midfield penalty with seconds left on the clock and England going nowhere will long be burned into the recesses of my mind.

I might need professional help to stop myself waking up in the morning and my very first thought being ' all you had to do was not give away a penalty. All you had to do. All you had to do...'

[TheScarf]

Sam Johnson is the boi as well.  I'd say 12 is his for as long as he wants it.

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

As exhilarating as the second half was on Saturday,  nothing should get away from the fact that our defence in the first half was schoolboy like. Embarrassing.

We've looked porous in every game this 6 Nations, and it should be something the coaches are making their number one priority.

We have a decent chance in Japan against an Ireland team that look one-dimensional and short of confidence. If we can get the defence sorted out together with a few players back from injury, then there's no reason why we can't beat them.

[honestly united]

To be fair to the Scottish defence in the first half, England did to us the exact same as they did 2 years ago. We expect them to crash up close to the rucks and mauls, and our defensive patterns are set up to defend against this (hence no one out wide) but instead England spin it wide and have numbers, and the line out for the 2nd was excellently worked. I think in terms of the tactics in the first half, you could see we were trying to play a more methodical game, but that just doesn't suit us.

Not having read through the last 30 odd pages post match, but the one big plus for me was the scrum. We were giving away a fair bit of weight to England, yet the scrums were solid all game, infact I dont remember any of them moving at all on our ball which gave us a platform to attack. In years gone past we would have been going backwards in hte scrum giving us no ball to attack with.

I think Townsend will have learned a lot about the players over the last few weeks, and hopefully we can get a settled game plan in place over hte warm up games before the world cup. We have some real depth to the squad now, but we are still painfully short in others. If we lose Finn we have no back up. I think Hastings has played brialiiantly the last 2 games at fullback, and I think he is head and shoulders above Kinghorn their but at standoff he tries to do too much himself. I think there could be a few people who have played a part in the this 6N's not going to make the plane to Japan

[tarapoa]

2 hours ago, Bob Mahelp said:

The stupidity of giving away a midfield penalty with seconds left on the clock and England going nowhere will long be burned into the recesses of my mind.

I might need professional help to stop myself waking up in the morning and my very first thought being ' all you had to do was not give away a penalty. All you had to do. All you had to do...'

 

Jonathan Davies analysed the game on the BBC highlights and just convinced me that glorious failure is embedded in our national psyche.  Obviously not failure to lift the cup, but the years since a win there would have been a bigger monkey off the back.

In that last minute - there was Finn Russell kicking it, when others would kill the game.  Russell needlessly  breaking out of the defensive line from the lineout.  A failed tackle on the nearside that should have got man and ball out of the park - the penalty award, despite the warning from the ref it was coming - and even at that, the chance to concede the inevitable try in the corner and make it a pressure conversion.

I added the last one myself, and it likely proves I know little about rugby and how anyone would think in such a situation.

 

Edited March 18, 2019 by tarapoa