Match Thread: Scotland V France | Sunday 15:00 11 Feb | Murrayfield | TV3 BBC FR2

Akrasia

England are our biggest competition for best team in europe at the moment, and their performances so far in the 6 nations have been:
Struggling to pull away from Italy for 60 minutes in game 1
Beating Wales because the TMO ruled that a perfectly legitimate try wasn't grounded.

Results matter. Ireland beat France, we should have beaten them by more and in less dramatic fashion, but we still won
We beat Italy extremely comfortably with 8 tries scored. The fact that we were playing much looser rugby than usual meant we conceded some tries that we would never concede if we were playing in a tighter more disciplined way, but if we had played tight and beat Italy by 28- 0, the same people would be on here saying Ireland's attack was too one dimensional and we should have scored more tries.

errlloyd

I saw a screenshot from an excel a few months ago that showed Ireland had passed the most, kicked the most, run the most, tackled the most of anyone in test rugby. We had decent linebreaks and tries. The conclusion I drew was that Ireland are playing at our potential.

A good few of our players aren't world class. Rugby World magazine had 7 of our players in the top 100 and I think that's about right.

The real metric as fans should be.

A: Are we winning.
B: Are we building.

A speaks for itself and I am satisfied with B.

razorblunt

Just back from a bitterly cold Murrayfield.
I really think France lost that, the French without Machenaud in the second half were rudderless.
I thought some of the penalties from a defensive point of view for the French looked harsh too, but without replays I could be wrong.

Russell, Hogg, and Laidlaw were awful in the first half, Laidlaw grew into the second half and Hogg got a bit of his confidence back and you could see that. Strange how the first Scottish try came from Laidlaw being caught at a ruck and Scotland having to scramble using fast ball and a relatively straight forward score.

Great use of the bench too, Denton really made an impact, as did Toolis. Special mention to Huw Jones, the line for his try was exceptional but he was doing that all game, more often than not the ball wouldn't get to him.


Need to mention the atmosphere, it was really flat which was surprising given the confidence from Autumn and it being the first 2018 game at home. Eventually got into it when they drew level. The French made fantastic noise.

The Rape of Lucretia

Bridge93 wrote: »

England should be the best in Europe. Theyve 10 times the playing numbers we have or Wales have and multiple numbers of professional teams.

Playing numbers has little or no bearing on the national team performance. The critical factor is the coaching quality of players when underage, or up to the age of around 20. That is where the 'talent' is created. Mountains of players with mediocre coaching and youth competition level will not deliver a performing national team. Mountains of adult players have almost no bearing on the performance at all at all. It hothouse development, even of a small number of players, that delivers the goods.

Beechwoodspark

Stheno wrote: »

Talking about Eddie Jones slating Rhys Patchell last week

Ah right. Eddie loves to get a bit of needle in.

I’d say Williams has no love lost for Jones. I’m paraphrasing it but He said straight after the England match yest that “Eddie needs to shut up making stupid comments and start coaching his team”

CurryFlavoured

Akrasia wrote: »

England are our biggest competition for best team in europe at the moment, and their performances so far in the 6 nations have been:
Struggling to pull away from Italy for 60 minutes in game 1
Beating Wales because the TMO ruled that a perfectly legitimate try wasn't grounded.

Results matter. Ireland beat France, we should have beaten them by more and in less dramatic fashion, but we still won
We beat Italy extremely comfortably with 8 tries scored. The fact that we were playing much looser rugby than usual meant we conceded some tries that we would never concede if we were playing in a tighter more disciplined way, but if we had played tight and beat Italy by 28- 0, the same people would be on here saying Ireland's attack was too one dimensional and we should have scored more tries.

Sounds very one-eyed. On one hand, you say England have been run close in competitive games and suggest they've been unimpressive. But in Ireland's case against France it was the result that mattered most.

The truth is, no team has stood out. Wales have been most surprising for me given how many injuries they have. England for me are favourites because they play us in Twickenham - two evenly matched teams and home advantage could be the difference. Lots of rugby to play between now and then though.

Bridge93

The Rape of Lucretia wrote: »

Playing numbers has little or no bearing on the national team performance. The critical factor is the coaching quality of players when underage, or up to the age of around 20. That is where the 'talent' is created. Mountains of players with mediocre coaching and youth competition level will not deliver a performing national team. Mountains of adult players have almost no bearing on the performance at all at all. It hothouse development, even of a small number of players, that delivers the goods.

I agree its youths where it counts regarding pro players and they dwarf us even more here. They've over a dozen academies who get access to the kids at a younger age than our 4 do here, although that seems to be changing here a bit now. Look at Englands success at 20s compared to the rest of us. A lot also counts on whether the best athletes are playing rugby or other sports, a reason why Wales and New Zealand punch way above their weight in rugby.

As of 2016 the six nations sides numbers were:

Eng: 1,428,862 registered males with 1,297,463 of them being 19 years old or less
Fra: 347,133 reg males with 223,232 under 19
Ire: 140,716 with 115,276 under 19
Wal: 49,226 with 26,818 under 19
Sco: 36,237 with 24550 under 19
Ita: 61,432 with 45,584 under 19

corny

The last maul was hilarious. 3 Scots in at the side, the one in the middle pulls it down and Lacey puts his arm out indicating Scottish ball.

He got lost when the atmosphere got more intense towards the end.

penybont exile

Jack Kanoff wrote: »

France will win handsomely.

Obviously....

Digifriendly

razorblunt wrote: »

Need to mention the atmosphere, it was really flat which was surprising given the confidence from Autumn and it being the first 2018 game at home. Eventually got into it when they drew level. The French made fantastic noise.

Interesting comment re atmosphere. Stephen Jones has an article re Scottish international rugby at Murrayfield and in it he describes some of the Sunday matches there as seeming 'almost godforsaken.' He refers to the number of travelling fans having 'crumbled dramatically'. I think that there would be more travelling fans if the game was on Saturday and that would give them more time to get back home in time for work on Monday.
I cannot see why all 3 matches each 6N weekend cannot be on a Saturday as on the final weekend. A Saturday night KO e.g. 7.45pm should not be out of the question. I know there is a problem with late train departures in Cardiff but does this problem exist in the other main capital cities? I have noticed over the years a much deader atmosphere at Sunday matches in certain venues. So I would drop Sunday afternoon altogether. Regarding Pro 14/Aviva Premiership matches on 6N weekends spread these out over Friday night and Sunday but set aside Saturday for wall to wall 6N.

stephen_n

By the sounds of things in the first half, there was no shortage of French fans there yesterday.

razorblunt

Digifriendly wrote: »

Interesting comment re atmosphere. Stephen Jones has an article re Scottish international rugby at Murrayfield and in it he describes some of the Sunday matches there as seeming 'almost godforsaken.' He refers to the number of travelling fans having 'crumbled dramatically'. I think that there would be more travelling fans if the game was on Saturday and that would give them more time to get back home in time for work on Monday.
I cannot see why all 3 matches each 6N weekend cannot be on a Saturday as on the final weekend. A Saturday night KO e.g. 7.45pm should not be out of the question. I know there is a problem with late train departures in Cardiff but does this problem exist in the other main capital cities? I have noticed over the years a much deader atmosphere at Sunday matches in certain venues. So I would drop Sunday afternoon altogether. Regarding Pro 14/Aviva Premiership matches on 6N weekends spread these out over Friday night and Sunday but set aside Saturday for wall to wall 6N.

I don't know about travelling fans, they always 'make a weekend' of it so tend to be there, regardless of the day the game is played.
I think Sunday games might be best kept to England, Wales and Scotland. Maybe even England and France where you have more options than just fly in and out.
I don't think the game being on a Sunday is the issue though, I've been going to Scotland games for almost 10 years now and it's always been pretty bad, they're quite unsporting too so generally they just "boo" when they aren't singing Flower of Scotland.

stephen_n wrote: »

By the sounds of things in the first half, there was no shortage of French fans there yesterday.

Yeah, I should have clarified the atmosphere was purely from a Scottish perspective, the French fans were incredible as always. There seemed to be a club on tour around where I was sitting who were making tons of noise. One poor Scottish fella tried to get a "Scotland" chant going to compete with 'Allez lez Blues', they joined in with him as he was dying a death.

The issue is with the Scottish fans themselves though, the SRU tried all they could, had the brass band play 500 miles and the Bagpipers play Scotland the Brave before kick off, no response from the crowd.
The PA then switched to more upbeat music when they were drawing closer and that really seemed to help. From when they were 20-26 down there was a noticeable shift in the atmosphere.
Interestingly Ali Price came on and was straight into gee-ing up the crowd too, so some of the players were aware of it.
Hopefully it's something that improves as they become more competitive again.

turnikett1

To be honest even though I was in Scotland once and really loved it, especially having fun with the locals, I get the impression that they are absolutely terrible sports fans. I want to like Glasgow but I honestly just dislike them so much because of the way the crowd acts, it's the same for Scotland. Was gutted France lost.

GDK_11

Akrasia wrote: »

England are our biggest competition for best team in europe at the moment, and their performances so far in the 6 nations have been:
Struggling to pull away from Italy for 60 minutes in game 1
Beating Wales because the TMO ruled that a perfectly legitimate try wasn't grounded.

Results matter. Ireland beat France, we should have beaten them by more and in less dramatic fashion, but we still won
We beat Italy extremely comfortably with 8 tries scored. The fact that we were playing much looser rugby than usual meant we conceded some tries that we would never concede if we were playing in a tighter more disciplined way, but if we had played tight and beat Italy by 28- 0, the same people would be on here saying Ireland's attack was too one dimensional and we should have scored more tries.

I could very easily turn this around though and make England look like they are playing well and Ireland are the team who are struggling.

Struggling to pull away from Italy for 60 minutes, it’s not uncommon for a lot of teams.
That’s not the reason they beat Wales, had that try been scored the penalty that was scored from the advantage would have been scrapped so they still would only have got 10 points in the match.

As you said yourself “results matter” I’m sure that’s exactly what Eddie Jones will be saying. England have big improvements in them.
Will they win every game, I’m doubtful, but they’re still 2 from 2 or 23 from 24 under Jones.

jr86

GDK_11 wrote: »

Struggling to pull away from Italy for 60 minutes, it’s not uncommon for a lot of teams.

There's also a world of difference between playing Italy in Rome first up (where they are traditionally at their most physical) and playing them at home (they're generally brutal on the road)

Jack Kanoff

Bit of fallout from the game...seems there was a scrap at TigerLilly... 7 French players are being questioned about a fight with Scots fans.. Picamoles , Thomas and a few more

errlloyd

Some of the french were questioned about an alleged sexual assault. But the police are satisfied that no crime has been committed. They're on their way back to France.

ScrubsfanChris

errlloyd wrote: »

Some of the french were questioned about an alleged sexual assault. But the police are satisfied that no crime has been committed. They're on their way back to France.

It's a complete non-story and was reported nearly everywhere. More media frenzy rubbish

Hurrache

ScrubsfanChris wrote: »

It's a complete non-story and was reported nearly everywhere. More media frenzy rubbish

The flight being held up by the police leaving the players sitting on the tarmac for a few hours while they investigate a reported crime is hardly media frenzy rubbish.

iroced

So we lost. We should have won but we lost. Could have said the same against Ireland.


Good. Defeat number 2 for my utopian re-vo-lu-tion!

Under Novès, we were starting to see the very early signs of some vague kind of *cough* *cough* attack minded playing style.
Now we see nothing.

We're not talking 'bout rugby anymore now. this is all politics. So the more we lose, the most ridiculous we get, the faster the corrupted pair of frauds (Simon Laporte) gets wiped away from the FFR and hopefully an unknown messiah will rise from the ashes of French rugby. This is our only hope, I'm telling you :pac:!

pickarooney

Did you miss the last 8 days in a drunken bender or... ?

Everything is fixed now, Italy have been vanquished!

iroced

pickarooney wrote: »

Did you miss the last 8 days in a drunken bender or... ?

Everything is fixed now, Italy have been vanquished!

haha nah was following the Olympics too much and forgot about our glorious 6N campaign :pac:...

By the way, 342 days since our last win. We managed not to get over the year mark !