Missed chance to show world what we can do
AFTER the terrific, intense and full-blooded World Cup matches earlier in the weekend that saw England and France produce surprise results to knock out Australia and New Zealand while Fiji gave the Springboks a fright, last night’s quarter-final in Paris was like the day after the lord mayor’s show.
Argentina resembled a team that wasn’t comfortable with the favourite’s tag and Scotland looked like a side that were afraid of the consequences of moving the ball wide against opponents who are renowned for the strength of their defence.
What transpired was conservative and reactionary rugby, with both nations preferring to play without the ball in the hope that mistakes would be made by the team in possession.
In crude terms Argentina won the match because they made fewer mistakes. This, despite the fact that it was by far their worst performance of the tournament. For Scotland, their lack of ambition was combined with a disappointingly high error rate. Unforced errors such as failing to exercise simple backline moves, and not dealing with long kicks, gifted Argentina possession they scarcely deserved. And as Scotland’s players and coaches will know, Argentina are an extremely tough team to play against if you don’t dominate the possession stats.
Frustratingly there were numerous chances for Scotland to grab hold of the game in the first half as Argentina kicked frequently and inaccurately. However, counter-attacking opportunities were turned down by the Scots in the hope that kicking high balls would bring reward. That was rarely how it worked out.
Scotland’s football team deployed a ‘contain and counter-attack’ strategy against France a few weeks ago Euro 2008 qualifying match which resulted in an amazing 1-0 win at the Parc des Princes. Last night across the city at the Stade de France, it seemed that our rugby team had the ‘contain’ element sorted out but crucially not the ‘counter-attack’ part of that winning strategy.
There was a change in proceedings when coach Frank Hadden wisely introduced a raft of substitutes to try and alter the way the team was playing. Andy Henderson had performed well since his appearance at half time, and his fellow replacements were at the heart of Scotland’s belated challenge to try and make it through to the last four of the World Cup for what would have been only the second time. To be honest, up until the 62nd minute it had been one of the worst matches of the World Cup, but suddenly the crowd were on their feet cheering on the Scots for what seemed like the first time all evening.
Craig Smith tore through the Argentine defence to give the Scotland attack real momentum and finally the two former Border Reivers players, Chris Cusiter and Kelly Brown, combined in the corner to get Scotland right back into the match, with the scrum-half touching down after a sustained and determined attack. Chris Paterson’s difficult conversion, which hit an upright but still crossed the bar, meant Scotland had a real opportunity to win the game for the first time in the match.
The closing minutes were very much like the Scotland v Italy match the previous week, but on this occasion Scotland were in the Italians’ shoes, having to take a chance to win the game. Dan Parks’ kick to the corner for his winger Sean Lamont to collect was so similar to Alessandro Troncon’s chip at the end of the game in Saint-Etienne, and when Parks’ kick missed its target it signalled the end of the road for Scotland’s campaign at the 2007 Rugby World Cup.
It’s difficult to evaluate whether Scotland’s World Cup was a success or not; making the last eight has to be described as a solid achievement especially given the fact that Italy, Wales and Ireland – three teams that finished above us in this year’s Six Nations Championship – weren’t able to make it past the group stages. However, I can’t help but have the thought of “if only” running through my head.
If only we had put out our big guns against the All Blacks at Murrayfield and tried to take on – and learn from – the best in the world, instead of fielding a weakened team to avoid sustaining any injuries ahead of the winner-takes-all match with Italy. If only we had played with the same ambition last night against Argentina in the first 60 minutes as we showed we were capable of during the final 20 minutes.
It will be a long four years until the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand before we get another chance to show how good we are when we play to our potential.
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