‘Little inaccuracies’ let down Scots

Scotland will face the hosts UAE in the quarter finals of the Emirates Airline Dubai Sevens Bowl competition after finishing third in their group following defeats by Wales and Australia and a victory over Canada in their final pool game.

The Scots had ambitions to play in the Cup quarter-finals, but the results against Wales and Australia destroyed any hopes of mixing it with the likes of New Zealand and Fiji. The Bowl competition, apart from the UAE team, however, will contain a number of strong sides, not least the 2009-10 World Series winners, Samoa.

Simultaneously encouraging and frustrating were the relatively small margins of defeat. Scotland never looked like being on the wrong end of a high score and that says much about the higher performance level the Scots have attained. But what is frustrating is the number of unforced errors that were made and which proved costly.

Principal among these was restart kicks where Scotland’s failure to secure possession either from their own kick-off or as receivers was expensive. The other damaging area was the line-out and notably against Australia.

“It’s frustrating. The players worked incredibly hard today and put in three solid performances. Arguably our weakest one was against Canada. We didn’t dictate the game, we didn’t control possession as we wanted. However, huge credits came out of both the Wales and Australia games” said Scotland Sevens coach, Graham Shiel.

He added: “It’s the little inaccuracies that cost us. We don’t have any margin for error so we have to be as efficient as we can. Our kick-offs were fantastic last week but this week we’ve struggled. We made it hard against Canada because we didn’t control kick-offs. Defensively, however, we’ve stepped up this week”.

Individually, day one in Dubai belonged to Andrew Turnbull. The Edinburgh and former Watsonian winger scored a brilliant hat-trick against Canada and, in doing so, reached the milestone of 100 tries in international sevens.

Against Canada, Turnbull played at centre where he looked hugely effective. “He’s relishing the opportunity. He brings so much to the team. Defences can’t cope with guys like Andrew” observed Shiel.

Turnbull’s contribution gave Scotland a 19-14 win over Canada to secure third place and his pace gave the Scots the opening score against Wales that gave them a 7-0 half time lead. Wales, however, hit back with two converted tries to win 14-7.

Scotland then played Australia in a competitive performance with tries by Peter Horne and James Fleming but errors at restarts and line-outs allowed Australia to win 24-12.

Apart from Turnbull, the Scots had strong performances from Mark Cairns, Colin Gregor and teenager Adam Ashe.