All Blacks burst Scottish bubble
Deacon Blue's song song Dignity was an awful choice by the Murrayfield DJ to mark the conclusion of Saturday's 49-3 humiliation of Scotland by the All Blacks, but no more awful than what the 58,000 crowd had just witnessed from the home team.
- By Steve Scott, rugby correspondent
- Published in the Courier : 15.11.10
- Published online : 15.11.10 @ 01.36pm
Scotland's remaining dignity, stripped by a purposeful, direct and skillful New Zealand team, was saved by referee Dave Pearson, who ended the match 90 seconds early.
Scotland had been the victim of the technical knockout earlier but, unlike the similarly overwhelmed Audley Harrison that evening, they had to soldier on for another hour.
It took New Zealand nine minutes to burst Scotland's latest over-optimistic bubble, built on an encouraging run of four games without defeat.
For three of those minutes, Scotland were on top and ahead through a Dan Parks penalty.
Hika Elliot, the new All Black cap, dropped a pass on New Zealand's first attack with four minutes on the clock. That was the home team's high-water mark.
The first of the brilliant Sonny Bill Williams' off-loads punctured the Scottish defence for Hosea Gear to score.
His second got Isaia Toeva down the right touchline and the pass inside to Dan Carter — who came off after 51 minutes barely breathing hard — brought the second try under the posts.
Evaporated
It was 14-3 in the blink of an eye, and the Scottish camp's buoyancy going into this game utterly evaporated.
Five more tries followed, while the Scots barely worried the New Zealand defensive line, much less the try-line.
Those Scots offended by New Zealand recently fielding less than full-strength teams against Scotland and deciding not to invite them to tour in the next decade got seven good reasons why there is such a lack of respect for the Scottish game in the country where rugby is in the lifeblood.
The chasm between the two teams was, as stand-in captain John Barclay put it later, embarrassing.
Graham Henry, the New Zealand head coach, is not a man to patronise opposition but one struggled to believe he was his usual plain-speaking self when asked to assess Scotland after the match.
"They've been playing some good footie," he said, referring to the wins in Ireland and Argentina.
"They haven't played since June, so they were pretty rusty, while we've played three weeks in a row and this was our best performance in a while, so Scotland copped it tonight.
"Don't give them a hiding for goodness sake. They're on the way up."
Progress
Scotland had made progress — the wins in Dublin, Rosario and Mar del Plata were evidence of this.
The absence of four players who featured in those three games — Al Kellock, Johnnie Beattie, Nick De Luca and Simon Danielli — cannot have made this much of a difference.
There was a certain callowness in the Scots ranks with two players under 23 making their first starts and two uncapped half-backs on the bench.
However there was plenty of experience in the team to counter this, and the two new half-backs, Greig Laidlaw and Ruaridh Jackson, were among Scotland's best players on the day.
New Zealand were brilliant, and had something to prove to themselves after being disappointed with their last two performances.
They also drew on an attitude of injustice, however ludicrous, that team-mate Keven Mealamu had been banned for butting an Englishman the previous week.
The All Blacks seemed to have done their homework on the Scottish defence, noting how the home side over-committed to rucks and how narrow their defensive line was.
This was perfect for Williams' off-loading game and time and again they successfully attacked down the right with a man overlap or more, a rarity in internationals.
Still, all this does not excuse or explain the 46-point gap, and head coach Andy Robinson has some work to do to build up players that looked shell-shocked in the after-match interviews.
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