All of Scotland’s brilliance, all their familiar failings. It cannot be denied, they have once again underscored their status as second only to France as an attacking force. But even with a 27-point cushion midway through the second half, they contrived to make life uncomfortable for themselves against a clearly inferior side. But for Blair Murray’s unfortunate little leap into a tackle a few minutes from the end, they might even have lost.
Wales managed to rouse themselves from a hopeless position to claim two bonus points, when Max Llewellyn crashed over to score their fourth at the death. Jarrod Evans’s conversion, his third, pulled Wales back to within six for the second point.
But five minutes earlier, Taulupe Faletau thought he had scored that fourth when he finished the counterattack Murray had sparked. A séance by the television match official determined that Murray had tried to hurdle a tackler, which he had, and the try was denied. So Wales waited to the last play of the game instead to claim those points.
Small consolation for them, still rooted to the foot of the table. They had been completely outplayed for an hour, but will welcome England to Cardiff next weekend with a modicum of encouragement at least.
But what extremes were displayed by their hosts. To say Scotland’s interest in the championship is over is not quite right. All eyes of the purists will be on Paris next weekend for the finale between the attacking kings of the Six Nations. For the record, Scotland will need all five points to move ahead of France – and to beat them by the small matter of 52 points.
Quite. Even then, they would need Italy (and Wales) to finish just as strongly if Ireland and England are not to trump them. Instead, they played here like a team who just had to run around a lot and score right, left and centre, in order to work through their frustrations at another championship gone by.
They had their bonus point well before half-time. There was a hint of the Keystone Cops about their fourth – from Wales’s perspective at least – in marked contrast to the effortless fluency with which the home side scored the three preceding tries.
Tom Jordan claimed that bonus point, capitalising on some crazy contortions by Wales trying to play their way out of defence. How different his first try – or indeed those either side of it, scored by Blair Kinghorn and Darcy Graham respectively, which were imperious in their conception and delivery.
Whether Scotland were making rugby look very easy or being waved through by a team out of their depth remained a moot point, but they are still so much fun to watch at their best. Kinghorn was just too fast and long for any of Wales’s back three to stop, after he appeared at the end of the first of the many multiphase attacks the hosts unleashed on their visitors. Jordan claimed his first a few minutes later, accepting Huw Jones’s inside pass after more of the same. And as for Graham’s try, the end of another multiphase attack, sent over by Finn Russell after a gorgeous dummy and delay, it was effortlessness elevated to an art form.
Russell, of course, suffered one of his more painful afternoons last time out, missing all three conversions in the defeat by England. Goes without saying he landed the conversions of all five of Scotland’s tries.
Between tries two and three, Wales did strike with a well-constructed score of their own. Gareth Anscombe had opened the scoring with a penalty after two minutes for a soft offence at the game’s first lineout. But his chip was instrumental for Wales’s try early in the second quarter, the race to which Murray won with ease.
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Still, a 28-8 lead at the break is smaller than the one they held over Wales in this fixture last year in Cardiff, when Wales recovered from a 27-point deficit to fall short by only one. So, just to dare fate, Scotland quickly established that very same buffer within 10 minutes of the break, when some close-quarter carries paved the way for more sublime handling and running lines, at the end of which Kinghorn cantered over for his second.
Murrayfield lost its mojo at that point, the game seemingly won, the championship still none the closer. And the air rather went out of Scotland, too. The referee started to find fault in their every move. From one penalty to touch, Wales set up a sequence. Joe Roberts was sprung down the left, and Evans expertly sent Ben Thomas scything through an empty midfield on the hour.
Mission: Impossible 2 became a little less so with Wales’s third a few minutes later, young Teddy Williams, the leggy lock, charging and reaching for the line. And that set up the crazy scenes at the end. Murrayfield remains flummoxed by their darlings. But they cannot take their eyes off them. Neither can the rest of us.
