Reports of Scotland’s demise were greatly exaggerated. Romania were routed here, comprehensively outclassed by opponents that tore into their task with determination and precision.
The Oaks have conceded 242 points in three matches and their limitations have been ruthlessly exposed. All that matters for Scotland, though, is that a second consecutive bonus-point victory has set up an unmissable encounter with Ireland in Paris next Saturday. Step by step, they have created a chance to earn what had looked an unlikely place in the last eight.
They scored 12 tries, the attacking bonus point was wrapped up six minutes before half-time, and a team showing 13 changes might have passed for the first XV. The fly-half Ben Healy was flawless off the tee, booting 11 conversions and scoring a try in the second half, finishing with 27 points. Bath’s Cameron Redpath and Gloucester’s Chris Harris made hay in midfield while the super-charged wing Darcy Graham grabbed a hat-trick before half-time and ended with four.
Space and time will be harder to come by against Ireland but still, this demonstrated the options available to Gregor Townsend. Looking ahead to next week’s last-eight shootout, the Scotland head coach said: “Ireland are the No 1 team in the world. They’re on the back of 16 wins … They’ve got a lot of confidence in how they have played in the last two or three years, and they’ll take a huge amount of confidence from the last game [against South Africa].
“You have to take your opportunities,” Townsend added of the challenge ahead. “But you’ve got to create them first as well. The encouraging thing is we have created opportunities, and taken them [at this World Cup]. Playing at a level of intensity and accuracy until the final whistle is important, and that’s always challenging against the top teams. But we believe in our team that we’re capable of doing that.”
To their credit, Romania initially tackled hard and held out for nine minutes, but it was only a matter of time before Scotland forced their defensive line to rupture. Redpath created the first try with a dynamic raid into the 22. He was tackled but offered an offload to Hamish Watson, who darted over.
Graham was soon haring through the middle and offloaded to the scrum-half Ali Price, who ran in unopposed. Graham was everywhere and arrowed through an increasingly disorganised Romanian line to make it 21-0 after only 22 minutes. Healy, on his Rugby World Cup debut, was orchestrating things nicely from No 10.
Romania’s evening worsened when Robert Irimescu doled out a shoulder charge to the head of Healy and was sent to the sin-bin, before Florian Rosu was almost immediately shown a yellow card for coming in at the side of a Scotland maul. Graham sprinted over on 34 minutes for the bonus-point score.
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Matt Fagerson romped over for the fifth while the full-back Marius Simionescu became the latest Romanian to have a yellow card waved in his direction by the referee, Wayne Barnes. That meant they were down to 12 and Harris soon sniffed out a gap, galloping across halfway and teeing up Graham for his hat-trick. It was 42-0 at half-time.
Dark blue waves kept crashing. Harris skipped over on the left. The full-back Ollie Smith wrestled over and Healy stroked over another kick. He then ran under the posts himself to make it 61-0.
On debut off the bench, Johnny Matthews roared down the middle for the 10th try and Rory Darge, another replacement, added the 11th. Graham sealed it with his fourth.
“He was outstanding tonight,” said the captain, Grant Gilchrist, of Graham’s scintillating display that puts him joint-second on Scotland men’s try-scoring list behind Stuart Hogg. “I’ve played a lot of games with Darcy and you know exactly what you’re going to get.
“The bigger picture was we needed five points, but we needed a performance that was a step forward for us as a group. You don’t need to big up next week [against Ireland] any more. It’s huge and our preparation will reflect that.”
Job done for Scotland; all eyes on Paris next Saturday.
