Wales are on course for a Six Nations title decider against England at Twickenham next month after coming from behind to defeat Scotland in Cardiff. The Welsh face unbeaten France here in the next round before returning to Twickenham where five months ago they delivered a fatal blow to England’s World Cup hopes.
“We had to dig deep against Scotland and it showed there are no easy games in this championship,” said Warren Gatland, whose side are unbeaten after two rounds following a draw in Dublin.
The Wales head coach added: “The six‑day turnaround for us showed and it was tough. We know that if we beat France we would then potentially be playing England for the championship. It is early days for the French under a new coach, but they’ll be confident after beating Ireland.
“We have a couple of weeks off before then and there are things we need to improve on.”
There were two key moments in the game. The first came after seven minutes when the Wales scrum-half, Gareth Davies, picked up the ball in what Scotland felt was an offside position and ran 45 metres to score the game’s first try.
The second was the decision of the Wales captain, Sam Warburton, to opt for a scrum under Scotland’s posts on 62 minutes when his side trailed 16-13 – rather than kick a guaranteed three points. The outcome was a Jamie Roberts try, and a lead that was quickly added to by George North.
“It was a risky decision, but I just had a feeling,” said Warburton.
“We’d not had much of an attacking platform in the half and a penalty would only have tied the scores. We would have had to get back up the field and as we were going well at the scrum, I thought it was worth the call.”
Scotland were eliminated from the World Cup after one of their players was ruled offside against Australia and, after watching on the big screen a replay of Davies standing in front of Jamie Roberts and then picking up the ball when the centre tapped it back, they started trotting back towards halfway for what they expected would be a penalty for them – only for the referee, George Clancy, to award the try.
“You could see what we thought from our body language as we moved up for the penalty,” said the Scotland scrum-half, Greig Laidlaw. “We thought the scrum-half was offside.”
So did Laidlaw’s head coach, Vern Cotter (left), but while Scotland made much of the decision at the end of their World Cup quarter-final, which ended with the referee that day, Craig Joubert, sprinting from the field, this time they played it down.
“I thought it was offside,” said Cotter. “Everyone makes mistakes and we have no excuses. We were disappointed not to win and parts of our game were much better this week. We will keep working.”
