\n<\/p>\n
In the extravaganza against France, Scotland’s penalty count was only four, which is staggering. They had 100% ruck efficiency, also staggering. <\/p>\n
They only conceded nine turnovers, which is almost beyond belief. Their usual number would be mid to upper teens. <\/p>\n
Their points-per-entry to France’s 22 number was off the scale; 5.6 points per entry. <\/p>\n
Those numbers won’t be repeated in Dublin, or possibly ever again, but Scotland need a high level of ruthlessness in everything they do.<\/p>\n
They’re averaging 3.5 points per entry, which is still excellent. Ireland are 2.9. In full flow they’re lethal – nine tries off first phase compared to Ireland’s one.<\/p>\n
The way the Irish attacked in the dismantling of England at Twickenham was reminiscent of their best days but they were predictable against Wales last Friday.<\/p>\n
Shane Horgan, the former Ireland wing, made the point on the Second Captains podcast that Ireland going for England’s jugular was “in some ways a product of fear that if we don’t go after this then we could get a hiding here”.<\/p>\n
“The ball carrying was back to Ireland’s best – options either side, slipped passes, balls out the back, loop plays, dummy loop plays,” Horgan said. <\/p>\n
“They carried very aggressively but they carried in ones and one-out runners and Ireland are less dangerous when they do that.”<\/p>\n
Isolated ball carriers will be no good for Ireland. With quick ball and unstructured play, Scotland are a force to be reckoned with.<\/p>\n
What they can’t do is return to the old narrative – gifting Ireland soft points with botched lineouts and letting them off the hook by dropping a ball over their try line or failing to execute a simple pass that would have brought a certain score.<\/p>\n
Ireland have been way too good for Scotland for the longest time but, boy, Scotland have been their own worst enemy in some of those losses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the extravaganza against France, Scotland’s penalty count was only four, which is staggering. They had 100% ruck efficiency, also staggering. They only conceded nine turnovers, which is almost beyond belief. Their usual number would be mid to upper teens. Their points-per-entry to France’s 22 number was off the scale; 5.6 points per entry. Those<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}