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'We’ve done it three times now': Jamie Ritchie is confident in Scotland's superior fitness
By PA
Jamie Ritchie feels Scotland can take “loads of confidence” from their strong fightback against France this calendar year ahead of the upcoming World Cup.
Gregor Townsend’s side were 27-10 down to the full-strength Les Bleus in Saint-Etienne on Saturday night, but roared back to 27-27 before succumbing to a late Thomas Ramos penalty and losing 30-27 against the team ranked second in the world.
Similarly, in February, the Scots mounted a stirring recovery from 19-0 down to get within four points of the French in Paris in the Six Nations before a late try gave the hosts a 32-21 victory. And last week at Murrayfield, Scotland overturned a 21-3 deficit to defeat Fabien Galthie’s team by a 25-21 scoreline.
“We can take loads of confidence,” said skipper Ritchie. “I don’t know many teams in the world that can go 18 points down (last week), 17 points down (on Saturday), 19 points down (in February) against France and come back to be in a position to win it at the end.
“We’ve done it three times now. I’m really proud of that and there is loads of confidence we can take from it, but there are small learnings we can take. They are not massive fixes and I know we can do them because we did it for 75 minutes of this game.”
Ritchie feels Scotland’s ability to stage back-to-back recovery missions against one of the top teams on the planet is testament to their fitness ahead of the World Cup.
“I’m a little bit tired, a little bit frustrated and there’s also a bit of pride,” he said. “I’m feeling a bit of everything.
“I feel like we started really well which was what we asked of the boys during the week. We focused on that on the back of last week and I thought we did it really well.
“We weathered a bit of a momentum shift where we gave away a few penalties, but we were only three points down going into half-time having been a man down. I was happy with that.
“I knew that we would be the fitter team in the end, which we showed. But I’m a bit frustrated with that five-minute period at the start of the second half where we know that they are dangerous on counter-attack and we let them score two tries.
“We came into the huddle and said, ‘we were 21-3 down last week and came back so there is no reason why we can’t do it this week’.
“We didn’t need to change what we were trying to do, but in defence we needed to make sure we were forcing a tackle contest off kicks and getting into our system.”
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Latest Comments
Some interesting stats that just proved what my first impression of NZ’s drive to speed up Rugby Union would amount to - fine margins here and there to cut a few seconds off the game and nothing else. To do more there would have to be wholesale changes to the game like doing away with scrums, lineouts and bringing back the ELV’s to have free kicks instead of penalties. Very little chance of it happening but, in the end, Ruby Union would be a 15-man version of Rugby League. There are reasons why Rugby Union is globally more popular that Rugby League and what NZ are also not considering is the unintended consequences of what they want to achieve. This will end up turning Rugby Union into a low value product that will not be acceptable to the paying public. If people really wanted a sped-up version of rugby, then why is Rugby Union globally way more popular than Rugby League? Rugby lovers all over the world are also not stupid and have seen through what NZ are trying to achieve here, selfishly to bring back their glory days of dominance over every other nation and compete with Rugby League that is dominant in Australasia. NH countries just don’t have the cattle, or the fantastic weather needed to play like NZ SR franchises do so good luck to whoever has to try and convince the NH to accept going back to the days of NZ dominance and agreeing to wreck the game in the process. I have serious doubts on the validity of the TV stats presented by GP. All they did was expand the broadcasting base by putting it on free to air, not even any indication of arresting the continued drop in viewership. Match day attendance goes hand in hand with broadcast ratings so if there was an increase in the one you should expect to see it with the other. However, the drop in match day attendance is very evident to the casual highlights package viewer. The only club who looks to be getting solid attendance is the Drua. I am calling it now that NZ’s quest to speed up the game will fail and so will the vote on the 20-minute red card.
Go to commentsIt’s a good, timely wake up call for NZ Rugby (seem to be a few of them lately!) - sort out the bureaucratic nonsense at board level. We can’t expect to stay the number one option without keeping fans/players engaged. We’ve obviously been bleeding players to league for years but can’t let the floodgates open (although I think this headline is hyperbolic as it’s a result of a recent Warriors pathways system where they are tracking things more closely) Understand the need to focus boys on rugby if they’re at a proud rugby school too, don’t think it’s harsh at all re Barakat in Hamilton. Reward the committed players with squad positions. An elite 1st XV system in NZ has done more for league than they even realise, think it’s good to protect our game further.
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