Scotland A savour victory over Saxons
England Saxons 7 Scotland A 13
The schedule is unforgiving but Scotland A head to Ottawa today buoyed by their dramatic victory over the England Saxons and determined to book a place in the Barclays Churchill Cup final.
The Scots face Canada on Wednesday just four days after holding out heroically for a punishing victory over the old enemy.
Head coach Steve Bates was already rueing Scotland’s short turnaround before the win over England put his side in the driving seat – but he will not struggle to rouse his troops again.
Scotland only reformed their A team for the Churchill Cup after three years in the wilderness but displayed the iron will of an established, winning team.
England dominated the scrum, possession and territory but after surviving two early chances, both created by grubber kicks from Sam Vesty, Scotland felt they would not be beaten.
Simon Danielli’s second-half try – barely four minutes after England had taken the lead with a penalty try – was the telling score.
But victory was only secured in the closing minutes as Scotland mounted a monumental try-line defence as England committed 12 men to the task of driving in the winning try.
Flanker Ross Beattie said: “It was a great day to be involved in Scottish rugby.
“At the end everyone wanted to put everything they had into trying to get the result. I have never been involved with a new team that has shown such determination.
“I don’t think many people would have expected that result but we all believed we had it in us. We have a great spirit and we played well.
“In one of the first meetings we had Steve said the only reason he took position was because he believed we could win the tournament.
“Steve wants us to go out and play and enjoy ourselves. If you are not enjoying it, you hold things back. Yesterday, nobody held anything back.
“Everyone gave everything they had for the cause and it showed.
“We played the conditions. England didn’t use them to their advantage because they had a huge pack. Possibly we were a little bit cleverer.
“After 10 minutes or so and we were smashing them in the defence, there was a real sense we could beat these guys. We showed a bigger desire to win the game.”
Scotland knew very little about England and have only limited background knowledge of Canada, but Beattie insists that is in their favour.
Scotland were ready to meet the challenge England posed and work out a way around it. In many ways it is a throw-back to the amateur days and something Beattie relishes.
He continued: “A lot of club sides spend a huge amount of time analysing other sides and sometimes to the detriment of analysing themselves.
“Our prop Colin Noon plays in France (for Biarritz) and he says all they ever do is talk about themselves, how they are going to play, what they are going to do.
“Sport is about meeting challenges on the pitch. We adapted to the conditions better and played the way we wanted to play.”
For England it was a case of missed opportunities. Their hopes of defending the Churchill Cup now rest on Canada taking advantage of Scotland’s short turn-around this Wednesday.
Captain Paul Hodgson, who ended the match with a bloodied broken nose, said: “I can’t fault the boys’ effort – it was outstanding.
“We had a lot of possession and territory and the game was definitely there to be won but we didn’t take that opportunity.
“We were inches away from scoring at the end but that is irrelevant – we didn’t and lost the game.
“We just have to pick ourselves up; there are still another two games to go and we can make amends.” Ireland A opened their first Churchill Cup campaign with a tough victory over the United States in Santa Clara.
The Irish relied on their mauling power to work tries for captain Shane Jennings, hooker John Fogarty and loose forward Neil McMillan.
Andrew Maxwell added the coup de grace during 11 minutes of injury time with a neat chip and chase.
Ireland now have a week to prepare for a powerful NZ Maori side aware that victory will book them a place in the Edmonton final on June 18.
Jennings said: “We knew that we had an advantage in the maul and we were a bit more organised as we had played during the year where they hadn’t played in a long time, so we had an objective to go for that maul and it went well.”
