EDINBURGH (Reuters) – Scotland might need scored 10 tries and simply crushed Tonga 60-14 of their Autumn worldwide at Murrayfield on Saturday, however coach Gregor Townsend is warning his facet’s defensive expertise want bettering forward of a lot harder exams towards Australia and South Africa over the subsequent fortnight.
Scotland had been devastating on the entrance foot but in addition let Tonga, who had been lacking key gamers and had little preparation, have some attacking passages of play and a comfort attempt halfway by the second half.
Townsend is anxious defensive lapses may show much more expensive of their subsequent two Murrayfield exams – towards Australia subsequent Sunday and the world champions Springboks on Nov. 13.
“Defensively we’ll need to be at our easiest. Australia have proven they’re an excellent attacking facet and they’re stuffed with confidence. They’ve received 5 take a look at matches in a row and so they’ve crushed the world champions twice,” Townsend stated.
“We set very excessive requirements in our defence, and at occasions towards Tonga it wasn’t at these requirements.
“I assumed Tonga performed rather well. We didn’t know what to anticipate from them, however I felt after they had the ball they precipitated us issues, so we’ll have a couple of issues to work on this week.”
Scotland may solely select home-based gamers for the take a look at towards Tonga however will, from this week, have a full squad as gamers are launched by their English and French golf equipment, together with the likes of British & Irish Lions Chris Harris, Stuart Hogg, Finn Russell and Duhan van der Merwe.
“We additionally need to see how shortly we are able to combine the gamers who’re going to come back again into the staff in the course of the week.
“We’ve bought an additional day to organize which ought to assist us however we all know it’s going to be a large problem on Sunday,” Townsend added.
(Writing by Mark Gleeson in Cape City; Enhancing by William Mallard)
