Positives to come later for coach

A TRY in the 77th minute by Scotland centre Joe Ansbro lit up the leaden Edinburgh sky to give his side a World Cup boost at Murrayfield on Saturday.

But a few moments of brilliance will hardly have any of the southern hemisphere giants trembling with fear.

The big guns watching this terribly poor encounter will look at the DVD and conclude neither side has much to offer. For Ireland though, at least the management will feel vindicated that, with a considerably under-strength team, they came within three minutes of stealing a win.

This team bore no relation to the one that scored three tries and held on for a 21-18 win against the gritty Scots in February. On this occasion Scotland scored the only try of the match at the death — but their celebrations will have to be put into perspective.

Scotland, with the lion’s share of possession, are unlikely to cause much trouble in New Zealand next month if this is the best they can do with what was close to a full-strength side.

If there are positives in defeat, Ireland’s overworked defence held up right to the end, frustrating their hosts with some fine tackles. But Ireland coach Declan Kidney would clearly have preferred a different outcome.

“I’m not a great man when we lose a match for coming out and saying, ‘oh, we did this, this, this and that was great’,” he said.

“Yeah look, we held out for about 78 minutes. I suppose in every match, even when we win, I’m always saying there are things we need to improve on. I know that we got things out of this but because we get to wear green the result is what people look for.”

If Ireland nearly sneaked a victory, they really didn’t have enough ball to deserve to win the game and Scotland, for all their failings in attack, shaded the issue.

Scotland coach Andy Robinson will, however, spend the next couple of days trying to figure out how his side failed to use their possession wisely while Kidney will look at ways to get his second choice players fully up to the mark before the World Cup.

They battled, and skipper Leo Cullen stole a couple of Scotland’s throws, but the momentum was with Scotland from the start. Ireland had to fight a rearguard action throughout the opening quarter and survived a succession of Scottish attacks.

At 65% to 35%, possession and position were in favour of Scotland and it didn’t look good for the visitors until an isolated 20th-minute chance fell to Luke Fitzgerald but the ball bounced into touch before he could follow up to create a real scoring chance.

With a tad more possession, Ireland cranked up the pressure but had to rely on a solitary penalty from Jonathan Sexton for a 32nd-minute lead they held to the interval.

Scotland drew level nine minutes into the second half through the boot of Chris Paterson but Ireland hit back again after Kidney emptied his bench and Sexton knocked over his second penalty.

The home side went for the kill late on, but it took Nick De Luca to break Ireland’s resolve with a strong run and perfect pass to Ansbro, who got in for the winning try that Ruaridh Jackson converted.

The bonus for Kidney is that Mike McCarthy had a decent innings in two positions (flanker and second row) while Rob Kearney particularly, Tomás O’Leary and Jerry Flannery proved their fitness after long injury lay-offs.

SCOTLAND: C Paterson, N Walker, J Ansbro, G Morrison, S Lamont, R Jackson, R Lawson; A Jacobsen, R Ford, G Cross, J Hamilton, R Gray, A Strokosch, J Beattie, R Rennie.

Replacements: J Cuthbert for Walker (21), A Dickinson for Jacobsen, A Kellock for Hamilton, D Denton for Beattie (all 58), G Laidlaw for Lawson, D Hall for Ford, N De Luca for Paterson (all 71).

IRELAND: R Kearney, A Trimble, F McFadden, P Wallace, L Fitzgerald, J Sexton, T O’Leary; T Court, S Cronin, T Buckley, D Ryan, L Cullen, M McCarthy, D Leamy, N Ronan.

Replacements: K McLaughlan for Ryan (51), I Boss for O’Leary, J Hayes for Buckley, J Flannery for Cronin, M O’Driscoll for Cullen, F Jones for Fitzgerald (60), M Horan for Court (62).

Referee: W Barnes (England).