Southwell: Scots face tougher test in Italian job
Chris Paterson continued his remarkable form with four penalties — taking his tally of consecutive successful kicks at goal to 30 — while Dan Parks added another from long range.
Jonny Wilkinson countered with three penalties of his own, the first of which was enough to make him the highest points scorer in Test history.
But Brian Ashton’s men were otherwise uninspired and while Scotland’s incredible 98% tackle success rate was impressive, England’s attack posed their hosts few problems.
The victory relieved a huge amount of pressure from the Scotland players and management and now they face Italy on Saturday with the chance of finishing what looked a forlorn campaign with a flourish.
However Southwell insists Nick Mallett’s side will be a tough proposition and that Scotland will need to play as well as they did against England to leave the Eternal City with a result.
He said: “Hopefully the weather will be better in Rome and we can play the sort of rugby we wanted to play against England and go out there and score tries.
“We’ve got guys in the backline who are pretty dangerous runners and we didn’t get a chance to see them against England.
“We’ve got to go there and finish the tournament on a high.
“I think Italy might even cause a few more problems than England did as they’ll probably play a bit more rugby.
“The forwards put in a massive shift on Saturday because they knew England would come here to try to bully us. The backline did their bit too and the defensive side of things is a massive part of the game and we haven’t done that particularly well in the past three games. To shut England out in terms of tries is pretty pleasing.”
The Edinburgh star was satisfied with his own performance, recovering from spilling an early high ball to produce one of his best displays in a Scotland shirt.
Southwell revealed that work he has been doing with a sports psychologist helped him move on from that mistake in the opening minutes of the match.
The 27-year-old said: “I’ve done quite a bit of work with a psychologist to try and enable me to get over that kind of thing because as a full-back if you make an error it can be pretty glaring.
“I think that was pretty much the only mistake I made all game which, again, in those conditions I’m quite pleased with.
“Frank (Hadden) spoke to me afterwards and said he was pleased with how I bounced back.
“Once those downpours came in on the back of the rain early in the day it made very slippery and I thought we stuck to our task better than England. That’s why we came out on top.”
Southwell; Lamont, Webster, Morrison, Walker; Paterson, Blair; Jacobsen, Ford, Murray, Hines, MacLeod, Strokosch, Taylor, Hogg.
Replacements: Parks for Lamont (21), Lawson for Blair (76), Dickinson for Jacobsen (64), Thomson for Ford (25), Smith for Murray (68), White for MacLeod (63), Brown for Hogg (72).
Balshaw; Sackey, Noon, Flood, Vainikolo; Wilkinson, Wigglesworth; Sheridan, Mears, Vickery, Shaw, Borthwick, Croft, Easter, Lipman.
Replacements: Tait for Flood (66), C. Hodgson for Wilkinson (70), Chuter for Mears (67), Stevens for Vickery (70), Kay for Shaw (66), Narraway for Lipman (73).
Referee: J Kaplan (South Africa).
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