Leah Bartlett has promised that Scotland’s heavy defeat [58-7] in their TikTok Six Nations curtain-raiser against England last weekend spells bad news for Wales tonight.
With head coach Bryan Easson naming an unchanged team for this championship round two clash at the DAM Health Stadium in Edinburgh, their loose-head prop believes the players are ready to prove that lessons have been learned and that resilience is as strong as ever.
“There’s no better way to challenge yourself and see where you are in terms of development than going up against arguably the best team in the world,” she reasoned.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say that England game was a reality check, but it gave us a really good platform to say: ‘This is where we fell down, but this is really pleasing in comparison to previous performances’,” she added. “And it puts a bit of a rocket up us to go into the rest of the championship and I know that all of us are very focussed on what is coming next rather than what’s already happened.
“Wales is a bit of a grudge match for us because the past few games have flipped back and forth between who has won, and it’s been by quite a fine margin, so the vibe in the camp is good and everyone is super-excited about playing again in front of our own crowd. We’ve all watched their game last weekend, which was a good win over Ireland [31-5], but I wouldn’t say anything particularly new was found from it. We know what to expect off them, we know who runs the moves and so on. They like a big ball carry and have a powerful maul, so we are going to have to front up.
“I think we’ve got a really good opportunity to go out and showcase where we’ve been developing.”
