Fla is not one to mince his words.
It was all doom and gloom for Scotland last weekend, after they were utterly outplayed by Ireland in a 27-3 defeat. The Scots never managed, or really threatened, to breach Ireland’s whitewash. Including the 10-minute period where Ireland were down to 14 men.
In truth, Ireland’s shock defeat to Japan this morning actually makes Gregor Townsend’s side’s task even harder. Assuming bonus point wins for themselves and Japan against Russia and Samoa, Scotland will need to beat Japan by more than 7 points in order to secure progression to the last 8.
Speaking on SportsJOE’s brand new World Cup preview show The JOEpan Rugby Show, Jerry Flannery was pretty blunt in his assessment of Scotland’s performance last weekend;
“Well, look… They were terrible, they were terrible. I thought it was a combination of Ireland playing well, but when you look at a lot of the errors that they made in the game, you know, I think they went out initially and the idea was to go after Jordan Larmour, Conway, Stockdale, test the Irish back three… but so much of what they did was their own errors. Their set piece delivery at no stage gave them any momentum, whether they were looking to kick the ball or whether they were looking to launch an attack, they never got any set piece momentum…The delivery that they got from their set piece did not help them in any way, shape or form.”
Scotland had no joy against Ireland in the lineout or scrum, coughing up possession and territory far too many times and rarely putting together the sleek running game we’ve come to expect from them. Going further, Fla explained just where the Scots need to improve before they face Samoa on Monday;
“They don’t have a big momentum winner like Billy Vunipola. If England are struggling, they can just take the ball, give it to Vunipola, he’ll get them over the gainline and then they can launch their attack from there. Gregor Townsend will be saying ‘listen, if we want to launch these plays, if we want to use our weapons which are Stuart Hogg, Kinghorn, Seymour then we’ve got to try and get the ball and we’ve got to try and get some forward momentum if we want to use them’, so set piece delivery is going to be the key for them.”
For now, Samoa and Russia are next up for Scotland before they face a do-or-die battle with Japan in their final pool game.
