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Van der Merwe praised after becoming Scotland’s record try scorer
By PA
Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend was delighted to see Duhan van der Merwe become the country’s record try scorer in their win over Uruguay.
The 29-year-old winger marked his 41st Scotland appearance with his 28th international try to overtake Stuart Hogg.
After Scotland held off a strong Uruguay comeback to win 31-19, Townsend said: “It probably wasn’t as free-flowing a game as we’ve had on tour and he didn’t get as many touches but he finished his try well.
“We’re all delighted for him and it’s an amazing achievement in such a short space of time and now he can kick on and score more tries in the future.”
The try put Scotland 19-0 ahead after earlier scores from Ewan Ashman and Luke Crosbie but the home team claimed the next 19 points in Montevideo.
Only some poor kicking from home stand-off Felipe Etcheverry, who scored one of his side’s tries, prevented Scotland falling behind.
Townsend’s replacements made a difference and two of them, Patrick Harrison and Pierre Schoeman, crossed inside four minutes of each other to turn the momentum around.
“It was a real challenge for us,” Townsend said. “Uruguay came with a lot of physicality and they were winning penalties and put us under pressure.
“But I felt the team responded well in the first half and then responded well again in the second half. But the bits between we were put under pressure and Uruguay deserved their points on the board.
“Look, this has been our biggest test and that’s one of the reasons we came here – to see how this team reacts when they’re under pressure, and they came through, so we’re very proud of them.
“The togetherness was on show there I think straight after that (third Uruguay) try we conceded.
“We had an excellent set in terms of kick-chase and put Uruguay under pressure and then we got our rewards.
“I felt the bench did well too, so it shows it’s a squad effort Test rugby, it always is.
“And while there’s some areas to improve, there’s a lot of pleasing aspects and individual performances throughout the tour and again today.”
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Latest Comments
They would improve a lot of such a scheme were allowed though JD, win win :p
Go to commentsI rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.
He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.
The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).
The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.
The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).
It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.
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