Scotland head coach Bryan Easson was pleased to get the win that keeps his side’s WXV 2 title hopes alive, but says the performance against Japan on Saturday afternoon was “not up to the standards we set ourselves”.
In 30 degree heat in the Athlone Sports Stadium in Cape Town, the Scots scored tries through Francesca McGhie, Alex Stewart and Rhona Lloyd with Helen Nelson and player of the match Meryl Smith kicking a conversion each to give them a 19-13 victory.
Read more:
Japan put them under a lot of pressure though and Scotland know they will need to play much better next week in South Africa versus Australia if they are to be in with a chance of retaining their WXV 2 title.
Scotland also beat Italy 19- 0 last week and after the Japanese tussle Easson said: “It was disappointing. A good win, but not up to the standards we set ourselves now.
“In any sporting environment the most important thing is to win, so that is the thing we are most pleased with, but it was not up to the standards that we set ourselves and we know we can perform better than that.
“When we did have the ball we probably overplayed a bit, but we dug in and we managed to grind out an important win.
“All credit to the girls, they stuck in and put their bodies on the line to help us come away with the victory.
“We are alive in the competition going into next week and that’s what we came here for, to try and win the title.”
Two bright sparks for the Scots were McGhie coming off her wing to score an early try and centre Smith’s general all-round play.
“We have worked a lot with Fran recently about her coming off her wing,” Easson explained.
“For the try she added that extra number in the middle of the pitch and that was excellent and we started the game really well.
“Stand-off Helen Nelson and centres Lisa Thomson and Meryl all played well against Japan and they all bring different things to the game so it’ll be interesting having chats as a coaching group about what we do for next week because we have a number of talented players to pick from in that area.”
Looking ahead to the Australia match next Saturday at the same venue, Easson added: “We’ll review this game properly first, I think it’s important we review it.
“It is also important that the medics check everyone over and then we refresh and go again for next week. We will look at Australia, we will review the first two games and then we will pick the squad that we feel is capable of going out there next time and getting another win.
“We are learning to win games, we’re learning to dig in and have that winning mentality, but there are two or three things that we want to fix for next week.”
Meanwhile, skipper Rachel Malcolm was just pleased to get over the line here for a 12th win in 15 Tests.
“That could have gone either way, Japan were outstanding,” the back-rower admitted.
“We have played them a number of times and by far that was the best performance they have put in against us, they really took it to us.
“I thought Lisa Thomson particularly was exceptional with the boot and I think she got us out of a lot of trouble and put on a good show against a very good kicking team.
“When we got into those kick battles and stayed in them we were really good and I think we were pretty savvy around our kick chase.
“But we probably played into their hands a little bit when we went shorter and carried a bit more. Our kicking game works, we know it works and our kick chase is good so we’ve just got to stick to that process.”
Looking ahead to a first meeting with Australia since the 14-12 loss in late 2022 at the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand, 33-year-old Malcolm added: “We will have to recover from this one first before thinking about Australia because Japan really did push us for 80-plus minutes.
“We have a lot of fix-ups needed as against Japan it wasn’t a good enough performance whatsoever, we are pretty disappointed individually and as a team.
“There are a lot of things that we need to put right, but we have time to do it and we are excited about next weekend.”
Read the rules here