Victory was vital: Cusiter

Scotland scrum-half Chris Cusiter believes it is impossible to underestimate the importance of the victory over Wales in the RBS 6 Nations Championship.

Frank Hadden’s side ground out a 21-9 win at a packed Murrayfield thanks to a faultless display of place kicking from Chris Paterson.

All Wales could offer in return were three penalties from Stephen Jones as Gareth Jenkins’ outfit slumped to their second successive defeat of the 2007 campaign.

It was just such an unappetising scenario which Cusiter revealed spurred Scotland on to the ugly if effective success.

Scotland are now able to turn their attentions to the visit of Italy to Edinburgh a week on Saturday and the prospect of facing Ireland at home and France in Paris with two victories under their belts.

The Borders half-back was well aware, though, that the remaining games at Murrayfield would have been low-key affairs had Wales continued their good run of form against Scotland last Saturday.

Cusiter said: “As Chris (Paterson) said, if we had lost against Wales we may as well not turn up for the next two, so it was a huge game. We’ve got Italy next, which is always a tough game, but hopefully we can keep the momentum going and win that one.

“Everyone likes to score tries and on another day we could have scored a few but little things like running into the referee or being held up over the line cost us. The defence on both teams was very good and in those games you just have to be patient and take the penalties when they come.

“The priority was getting the win and so from that point of view it was successful.”

Cusiter is enjoying his best run in the side under Hadden, who has generally preferred his old Edinburgh player Mike Blair at scrum-half during his tenure.

But with Blair out injured for the Six Nations, Cusiter has a chance stake a claim for the number nine shirt on a permanent basis.

The only blip on an otherwise excellent performance from Cusiter was the Wales forwards scragging him a couple of times at the base of a ruck.

The Lions star believes the Wales back-rowers were pushing the offside law to the limit – and for the most part got away with it.

He said: “In the second half we got the edge on the decisions in terms of offsides. Sometimes a team gets away with them and on other occasions they get pinged. As the game went on, they started to get caught.

“I got caught a couple of times and you immediately think they must have been offside. Usually when you watch the video afterwards there is no way there were behind the back foot. But you’ve just got to play the referee. The penalties eventually came in the second half as we kept the pressure on and they even had a man sin-binned for it.”

Cusiter also heaped praise on defence coach Alan Tait, who plugged the large gaps seen in Scotland’s line against England at Twickenham for the visit of Wales.

The Aberdonian said: “Alan keeps it simple and just tries to make everyone a good defender individually. There are no complicated systems – there are little bits and pieces that we tinker with but it’s generally easy to put into practice.

“This week he was telling us to target the ball and try to dislodge the ball because it would be difficult to hold on in the wet conditions.

“At the base of it is just working hard. You make a tackle and you get straight back up and make another one. It makes a huge difference to have 15 guys on the field willing to do that.”