Scotland v Ireland Sunday 3pm

[BaldiePete]

I was dreading the Ireland game and that was justified in the first few minutes making for a very long afternoon on Sunday. Having at most three or four great players just isn’t enough to compete against stronger teams and I can’t see that a change of coach will make much difference. However, Townsend has been in for eight years, that’s long enough. Time for a change to give someone else a chance to see if they can make a difference. Johnny Beattie disagrees.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union ... 2mznvnmy8o

As for the England game, we’re meeting them when we are on a downer and they are looking confidently upwards and I expect they’ll win comfortably. A small plus is that unlike against Ireland we have beaten them a lot recently so we shouldn’t have the feeling that a loss is inevitable against them.

The Wales match is a worry if they have a new coach bounce but Ireland should beat them comfortably before they meet us which could knock that on the head. Before the tournament I expected us to beat Wales and I would still expect that, but I’m less confident than I was.

[BaldiePete]

Some stats.

Scotland have never beaten the team who were ranked 1st in the world when we met them and have only beaten the 2nd rank team four times.

[Mikey Brown]

I was dreading the Ireland game and that was justified in the first few minutes making for a very long afternoon on Sunday. Having at most three or four great players just isn’t enough to compete against stronger teams and I can’t see that a change of coach will make much difference. However, Townsend has been in for eight years, that’s long enough. Time for a change to give someone else a chance to see if they can make a difference. Johnny Beattie disagrees.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union ... 2mznvnmy8o

As for the England game, we’re meeting them when we are on a downer and they are looking confidently upwards and I expect they’ll win comfortably. A small plus is that unlike against Ireland we have beaten them a lot recently so we shouldn’t have the feeling that a loss is inevitable against them.

The Wales match is a worry if they have a new coach bounce but Ireland should beat them comfortably before they meet us which could knock that on the head. Before the tournament I expected us to beat Wales and I would still expect that, but I’m less confident than I was.

Some days I think Townsend has done as much as he possibly can, but then I wonder why our execution under pressure is still often so poor. Is that really something that the head coach of the national team should be dealing with though, and not who is responsible matching the skills with the intensity further down the chain? I agree it's largely systemic, but at the same time we have to try something different soon. Surely? How many more tactical innovations can Townsend have up his sleeve?

I also agree that us being (largely) entertaining to watch, and actually scoring tries, shouldn't be underplayed. I remember watching that Youtube clip of Sean Lamont making a line break against New Zealand in 2006 (and getting caught by a 47 year old Tana Umaga) over and over as if it was a World Cup win. We were so desperate for any signs of hope at all.

The 2017 NZ game seemed truly unbeleivable in comparison, yet 8 years later I don't know how much better a team we actually are? Ireland, Sa, France, Arg, Italy have improved massively in that period so it's hard to say for sure. The recent SA game I was so immensely impressed with our pack. We actually fronted up and if our execution had been there in the backs we could have done it.

That stat about beating the number 2 side 4 times in recent years actually seems surprisngly high, given Scotland's world status. Equally we have climbed quite high in the rankings ourselves recently on the backs of wins against some pretty dubious outfits, so I don't know how much stock to put in that.

I stumbled on these stats, which pretty much reinforce how we've all felt. We just don't seem to have the accuracy, aggression, firepower (whatever combination) to match Ire, Fra, Eng to consistently make dents in the opposition line.



50% more carries than the top teams also supports that feeling we're overcompensating for all this by really working our players into the ground trying to make these meaningful impacts.