Vern Cotter’s nickname is not “stern Vern” without reason. His brow is normally furrowed and his stare intense but the Scotland coach appreciated that Saturday evening – following his first Six Nations victory – was a moment to be greeted with a smile. “We will enjoy the evening,” Cotter said wryly, “because it’s been a long time between drinks.”
A long time between drinks indeed. Nine championship matches had passed, seven of them under Cotter’s watch, all lost. Scotland broke their duck in some style, scoring three fine tries and defending gallantly when twice reduced to 14 men. The scoreline did flatter Scotland but this was a performance impressive for its resilience rather than its flourishes, even if they have never scored more points in a Six Nations match.
“The guys are beaten up,” Cotter said. “A fair indication of how much has been left on the paddock is that they came in with the win but they weren’t moving much [in the changing room]. It was a hard day.”
The relief was personal for Cotter. This is a better Scotland side than the one he inherited before last season, full of purposeful, intelligent young players brimming with adventure and enterprise, and bored of life as plucky losers. Here, Jonny Gray got through 22 tackles, each of Stuart Hogg’s nine runs were incisive, while the front row butchered Italy, with all four of the hosts’ props conceding a penalty at scrum time, and Alasdair Dickinson particularly brutal against Lorenzo Cittadini.
“What we saw was a team that wasn’t frightened to lose even though there was a lot of pressure externally on the players to do a good job,” Cotter said. “They did not let those external pressures take over and applied pressure on the opposition.
“I said that for me it was very important that we didn’t go into the game facing backwards and they could have gone into their shell but they didn’t. They scored two tries quickly. They wanted to opine and impose our game, so credit to them.”
Both of Scotland’s flankers scored a try in the left-hand corner in the opening quarter, to set up an 11-point cushion that they never, even when a man down and camped on their own line, allowed to be slimmed to under six. When Marco Fuser rumbled over, the southernmost point of a vast pile of bodies, to bring Italy within six with 18 minutes remaining, Scotland simply returned to the opposition half, and – as he did throughout the second half – Greig Laidlaw knocked over three points to extend the lead again. Every time the Italians strayed, Scotland’s yapping ferret of a captain just picked up three more.
Cotter was delighted with the manner his side weathered the storm. “We managed to find a way through, we didn’t go into our shells and the players looked to find solutions and they did.”
It was Tommy Seymour’s 78th-minute try, after another moment of magic from Hogg, who made an outside break before offloading out the back of his hand, that made the scoreline look comfortable.
It was that stoic second-half defence that Seymour believed won the day. Five minutes before he crossed, as Finn Russell returned from the sin-bin, sustained Italian pressure was broken by a fumble on Scotland’s five-metre line. At the resultant scrum, Dickinson forced Martin Castrogiovanni to buckle, and the boots of Hogg and Russell sent Scotland to the other end of the field. Once more, somehow, they had found a way.
“It’s predominantly about character,” Seymour said. “We spoke at half-time about seeing that through and it was something we weren’t going to let go of. It’s about that desperation and we got there in the end. The defensive work on the line was excellent, and then our scrum did what it had done all day. They managed to secure the penalty, and we got up the right end of the park, and obviously the final try of the day gave the boys a big lift.”
Cotter was not about to let his grin become a fixture. “We’re not going to get thrown into thinking this is the great release and that Scotland’s going to win every game for the next 20 years,” he said. “That’s not going to happen. It comes through hard work and it comes through believing. So if this game gives players belief and we can prepare very well against France, I think we can play better than we did today.
“We are only just starting with the development. I think this team can go a lot further. Without applying pressure I think it can, we are starting to see cohesion within the group.”
Finally, Cotter has a result as tangible evidence of progress. As the physical but limited French head for Murrayfield, he has a chance of another, greater statement.
