Scotland have won nine of their last 12 Test matches and scored 40 points versus Wales on Friday, but assistant coach Matt Banahan believes they have just “scratched the surface” in terms of attack and can get even better going forward.
When former English men’s internationalist Banahan joined to help with the backs and attack this time last year, Scotland had bounced back from 12 losses in a row to defeat Italy and Ireland in the Six Nations.
Since he has been part of Bryan Easson’s coaching set up they have won seven games and they have come against Spain, South Africa, USA, Japan, Wales, Italy again and Wales again. Losses have come versus France, England and Ireland.
The 40 points scored versus Wales a few days ago at Hive Stadium in Edinburgh in a 40-14 triumph was the most scored under Banahan’s watch - and the 37-year-old believes there is even more to come from this group of players.
They are preparing to play Fiji for the first time ever on Saturday in the capital before heading off to South Africa next week as they look to defend their WXV 2 title.
“The mindset and growth within the group is pushing things forward all the time,” he said.
“When I came into the group last year they had already beaten Italy and Ireland and had started the ball rolling.
“I just came in and tried to put in a bit of detail and clarity around the attack and now, heading into my second year with the group, I feel like we are improving, but the exciting thing is that we have only just scratched the surface.
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“What we have been trying to do in terms of attack started to show against Wales and we started to show the opportunities we can create.
“It is now about really focusing in and taking all of those opportunities because even though we scored 40 points on Friday there were still points that we left out there.
“If you can walk away from the pitch having scored a few tries, but knowing you could have had more then that is a good place to be.”
During the recent pre-season block of four weeks Banahan, the other coaches and the players worked a lot on their attacking game and in the first half versus Wales, although they had plenty of possession, they only scored one try and were 7-5 down.
After the break they were much more direct, clinical and created space out wide with better angles of running.
Now Banahan wants to see the attack function for 80 minutes against 14th in the world Fiji and going forward.
Banahan, who was a stellar servant to Bath and Gloucester in his playing days mainly as a winger and earned 16 England caps, explained: “We just want the players to be alive every time the ball is in play.
“We have to be alive so that we can move the ball at any point to left or right so that we get defences guessing.
“Once you have defences guessing they have less line speed and are less structured and you can get over the gain line more.
“So, we just have to stay alive more and always be switched on to what is in front of us and to what could be created.
“That is the big focus for us, we don’t want to miss opportunities and it can be as simple as a one pass play when a defender is not looking, but if we are not looking we miss it.
“Sometimes under fatigue you miss things, but if we take more opportunities to open up the play than we miss then we’ll be on the right track.”
And that ‘right track’ would ultimately see Scotland breaking into the top five in the world rankings for the first time.
They are sitting sixth at the moment and want to be at least top eight by next year’s Rugby World Cup in England to get a more favourable draw, but Banahan is thinking higher than that.
“I have loved it [the last year] and we have got better, but we could be really good,” he stated.
“My challenge now, along with the other coaches, is seeing how far we can push ourselves rather than sitting still and thinking where we have got to is fine.
“We want to be the best that we can be.
“We now have games coming up against Fiji, Italy, Japan and Australia [the latter three in WXV 2] to show that we are continuously improving.
“We want to show that we are not just the Scotland of old, but that we are ready to try and compete with the best.
This new Scotland is looking to move up the world rankings from six to five.
“Then we have to think ‘how then do we squash the gap from five to four and so on?’ - right now the task is to push on and get to number five, but these are exciting times for sure.”
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