France v Scotland 6N Championship Sunday 26th February 2023

First topic message reminder :

France v Scotland
6 Nations Championship
The Auld Alliance Trophy

Stade de France
Paris

Sunday 26th February 2023
KO 15.00


Well onto the third round of matches and Scotland v France gets the sunday afternoon slot this time around.

Not many would have given Scotland a chance for this game at the start of the competition, but now it may be a bit closer than first imagined.

Scotland did win on their last visit to the Stade, albeit in an empty stadium and over the years have not actually had a bad record against the French, even when we were poor. Scotland are on a run, have a settled side, few injury worries and a mixture of confidence and control that we have not seen for quite some time.

Steady on though, this is France we are playing and they are at home. They are one of the two best sides in the world on current form, even if they have flattered to deceive a bit in their last two games. They will not want to lose this match and go one from three and have all the old accusations about being a flakey team come right back to haunt them after having largely put that moniker to bed over the past few years. You would fancy that they will try and steam roller Scotland in the way that England did, only they are better than England and will maybe be more successful. If they get a decent lead in the game they will be all but impossible to haul back.

So any chance for Scotland will involve them simply managing to stay in the game and to weather the French onslaught, which will surely come. If it is close at the end, a big if, then Scotland may be the fitter team and they have certainly finished their last two games very strongly.

All the smart money is still going to be on a French win, but it might be close and for Scotland, there is certainly some hope. My gues at our team is something along these lines:

1. Schoeman
2. Turner
3. Fagerson Z
4. Gray R
5. Gilchrist
6. Fagerson M
7. Ritchie - capt
8. Dempsey - MoM performance on friday might swing it
9. White
10. Russell
11. DVDM
12. Tuipolotu
13. Jones
14. Steyn
15. Kinghorn

Subs

Bhatti
Brown
Nel
Gray
Skinner
Price - had his best game of the season on friday
Redpath
Hogg

If France don't score in the next couple of minutes then Scotland win

Arghh!!! Lineouts!!

At stuff it. When you can’t even execute a simple line out we don’t deserve to win

That lineout was a complete shambles!!

One missed lineout is going to cost us!

Right. We go from deep.

Surprised France chose the lineout over the scrum.

funnyExiledScot wrote:Right. We go from deep.

May well have been better wellying that.

Bad luck Scotland - muffed line-out cost dearly

Ah well. Harsh not to get a losing bonus point there, but some basic mistakes at key times cost us.

Turning down two shots at goal in that situation to go for the TBP is something few sides would do in fairness to France. Pays off as well.

A terrific if very odd game after the two early red cards.

Well done France, we played well but can't complain about the result, we were always chasing the game

It’s the hope that kills you.

Fight back against a very very dirty team and brown brain fart of an overthrown lineout costs you

France too strong for us

Would have preferred to see 15 v 15 though

Barnstormer of a game. Sense of regret for Scotland, I imagine, as they had enough chances to score 40+, but finesse and finishing let them down.

Well played France, some absolutely ferocious intensity from them. That line out was the most Scottish thing to ever happen. Oh what could have been, as usual. Still, hell of a fight back and incredible belief to even get back to being in that position

Can't complain about the performance after the initial France blitz. They're number 2 in the world for a reason! I hope this is the motivation the boys need to do a job on Ireland.

Well done France, they were terrific in that first half.

Great game for the neutral but sad to see Scotland lose when they were still in it all the way to the final minutes. Just lacked a bit of composure at times against a very good opposition.

Oh well, Triple Crown opportunity in two weeks time.

tigertattie wrote:It’s the hope that kills you.

Fight back against a very very dirty team and brown brain fart of an overthrown lineout costs you

France too strong for us

Interesting to know how many penalties they had. Seemed a lot

Also seemed the red was a little cowed by the crowd

But we had our chances but not able to take advantage

But even though we lost. Fairly happy with the way we played

I said earlier that I thought we'd lose and be very disappointed...we did but I'm not.
That was a phenomenal game.
You know when kids play football " You be Real Madrid, we'll be Liverpool "? Well, it was is if they'd said " You be the Marx Brothers and we'll be Monty Python"
What a game..
Did Mbawza jump early or Chuckles throw late?

What a fantastic game France dwsecced winners, but well played to Scotland uyou made France work really hard for the win.

Although we lost that was still the game of the weekend for me. Shug just keeps getting better. Bring on Ireland!

Forgot about the bonus points, would have been nice to have France on 10 points and Scotland on 11 heading into round 4

Have to say, I thought Johnny Gray played very well when he came on. I think we will finally get to see a GrayR/GrayJ second row starting for Scotland next time out.

I am not sure they have ever both started together in an international, that will be quite a day for the Gray families.

Dempsey and the Scottish front row also did well (one lineout excluded)

Price probably justified his place as well, Toonie certainly seemed to think so in his post match interview.

Only 21 metres for VDM today. He had 150m vs Wales and 104m vs England. I wish the players could have found a way to get him into the game a bit more but a few of the attacking line outs went a bit pear shaped which probably had an impact on the attacking set piece play.

BigGee wrote:Have to say, I thought Johnny Gray played very well when he came on. I think we will finally get to see a GrayR/GrayJ second row starting for Scotland next time out.

I am not sure they have ever both started together in an international, that will be quite a day for the Gray families.

Dempsey and the Scottish front row also did well (one lineout excluded)

Price probably justified his place as well, Toonie certainly seemed to think so in his post match interview.

Yeah the Gray brothers were a great combination under Cotter. Toonie has not gone there much but I guess that was mostly because R gray was injured. He had another fantastic game today.

I think today was the second time Toonie has done a "bomb squad" substitution of the entire front row and I am not convinced it is the right thing to do. I thought Nel was a good choice for the scrum but perhaps keeping Schoe on a bit longer would have been a better decision.

Also Fickou scored a great try at the end but Bhatti was very slow to react to the switch of play. Went high on Fickou and it was a very easy score when you watch it back. The pressure was immense from France but I think Scotland could have defended better in that situation.

bsando wrote:Also Fickou scored a great try at the end but Bhatti was very slow to react to the switch of play. Went high on Fickou and it was a very easy score when you watch it back. The pressure was immense from France but I think Scotland could have defended better in that situation.

Once we lost that lineout, we were always losing that match

French were thrown a lifeline and boy did they grab it!

I'd quite like to have had another look at those 2 forward pass calls given against us.

Neither looked barn door on the limited views we got of them, tef blew them very quickly

Nah, both looked forward.

Finn’s one is a stone wall because he stopped dead. If he ran forward he may have gotten a way with it.

Shug’d looked pretty forward too.

What I’d really like looked was the off the ball pushing, the use of legs to trip players in tackles and the french maul infringements.

At the end of the day we were out muscled by a very strong french side though

Just a quick comment, but I thought Scotland were on a par with France for significant portions of the match.  Certainly most of the second half until very late on.  All you need to do is connect a vacuum to Finn Russell and suck out the stupid stuff and keep the good.

And then figure out why Duhan was not involved in the attack.....

Bugger.

Just watched the highlights and we were really dead and burried after 20 minutes. It's remarkable we were able to come back from that.

Fortunately/unfortunately t didn't show the messed up lineout late on but that's a classic Scottish curse which I thought we'd finally moved on from.

Real shame we couldn't get a BP!

France had quite a few penalties in their own 22 and were somewhat lucky to avoid a yellow.

Overall though, we were not good enough. We did not withstand the French onslaught in the first 20 as well as blowing 2-3 opportunities in the French 22.

Our forwards still have a habit of going too high in one-on-one challenges and getting bumped off allowing the opposition to gain metres after the contact.

If we play against Ireland like we did between minute 25 - 75 of the France game, we have a shot. Watson, Cummings and Darge each should get another game under their respective belts next weekend and should strengthen our bench

BigGee wrote:Have to say, I thought Johnny Gray played very well when he came on. I think we will finally get to see a GrayR/GrayJ second row starting for Scotland next time out.

I am not sure they have ever both started together in an international, that will be quite a day for the Gray families.

Dempsey and the Scottish front row also did well (one lineout excluded)

Price probably justified his place as well, Toonie certainly seemed to think so in his post match interview.

Is that sarcasm...? They've started together loads of times!

RDW wrote:

BigGee wrote:Have to say, I thought Johnny Gray played very well when he came on. I think we will finally get to see a GrayR/GrayJ second row starting for Scotland next time out.

I am not sure they have ever both started together in an international, that will be quite a day for the Gray families.

Dempsey and the Scottish front row also did well (one lineout excluded)

Price probably justified his place as well, Toonie certainly seemed to think so in his post match interview.

Is that sarcasm...? They've started together loads of times!

Yes, just looked back at that and they have, but no time recently and not nearly as many times as you would have imagined at the beginning of their careers.

JG was looking much more back to his best today and he is a better player than Gilchrist when he does play well. Hopefully they will get some game time together at this stage in their careers.