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Biggar: 'I would rather people were criticising me than praising me'
By PA
Dan Biggar described Wales’ 20-17 Guinness Six Nations victory over Scotland as one of his finest wins in the Welsh shirt.
The Wales captain and fly-half, despite suffering an issue with his right knee, kicked four penalties and a clinching drop-goal 10 minutes from time.
It meant that he marked his 100th Test match appearance for Wales and the British and Irish Lions in style as the defending Six Nations champions revived their title challenge following a tame 29-7 defeat against Ireland last weekend.
But Scotland have now lost 11 successive Tests to Wales in Cardiff – a sequence that stretches back 20 years – as they failed to build on victory over England seven days ago.
“This is one of the best victories I have had in a Welsh shirt,” Biggar said.
“We didn’t get it right last week, and when you don’t get it right – certainly in this country – you take a fair bit of flak for it.
“For me, (it is) a brilliant day. The family are here, my little boy was able to come out on the pitch afterwards. It doesn’t get a huge amount better than that.
“We’ve got a couple of days out of camp, so I will be driving home and having a family evening, I think. I am taking the little one to watch Sing 2 tomorrow – that is my afternoon, really rock and roll!
“It is a little bit of relief as well because we knew we were coming into the game under pressure, having not performed last week.
“We had taken a fair bit of flak, but for me, I absolutely love that. I would rather people were criticising me than praising me, because it brings out a different side of me and maybe more of a focus.
“It was very much a territory-based game and not wanting to play too much in a tight match. One moment wins or loses you the game, and we are pretty pleased we came out on the right side of it and managed the second-half.
“It was quite an emotional day, actually – a lot of heat flying around – and we just stuck together internally.
“But we also have to make sure we don’t get ahead of ourselves. We know we were very poor last week and played a lot better this week and got a result.
“It is about building on this now, rather than thinking we have cracked it and take our foot off the gas. It is really important we knuckle down and prepare for England (in two weeks) as well as we can.”
On his injury, meanwhile, Biggar added: “It’s just a bit of an issue with the right knee. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem, just a little niggle.”
Wales’ victory has revitalised a campaign that next takes them to Twickenham, which is followed by home games against Italy and France.
A successful title defence remains a tall order, but they have at least put themselves back in the mix.
Wales head coach Wayne Pivac said: “The disappointment was evident from every single person in the squad last week.
“I’ve known these boys long enough now to know that wasn’t the Wales team that we know. There was a big improvement today.
“From our point of view, we won’t be getting too far ahead of ourselves except to say we were pleased with the performance and certainly improved in the areas we wanted to.
“Now, we’ve got two weeks before the game with England. Our priority is to recover from this performance and get back in next week, work hard, and make sure there is more improvement to come.”
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Latest Comments
Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".
But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.
The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.
Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?
Go to commentsI think they just need to judge better when it's on and when it's not. If there is a disjointed chase and WJ has a forward in front of him and some space to work with then he should have a crack every time.
If the chase is perfect and the defence is numbered up then it needs to get sent back. From memory they have not really developed a plan for what to do if they take the ball on/in the 22 with a good chase and no counter attacking opportunity.
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