Welsh wizardry bedazzles Scotland

Wales 27 Scotland 13:THE MILLENNIUM Stadium does not get any happier for the Scots. For a Welshman or a neutral this was a fantastic match to warm the cockles of the Six Nations after the chill of Saturday but for Scotland another joyless championship is stretching ahead and it is getting colder by the day.

Wales are top of the table and rampaging towards a Triple Crown showdown with England at Twickenham the weekend after next. It will be a clash of youth on youth but it is the Welsh who will be bringing ebullience with them. Much more of this and they will soon be everyone’s second favourite team.

With Leigh Halfpenny scoring 22 points, this was as impressive a win as the previous week’s against Ireland in Dublin, despite, or perhaps because, Wales spent so much of it trying to contain a Scotland team everyone knew would be fired up.

When the moment presented itself, Wales were clinical and ruthless. An extraordinary 15 minutes at the start of the second half, which saw Scotland lose two players to the sin-bin and make multiple errors, where few had been made before, transformed the balance of a game that had rested on a knife edge. Wales, whose captain Sam Warburton failed a fitness test just before kick-off, romped to three tries, their muscular three-quarters making hay against depleted opposition.

Alex Cuthbert was first over, barely a minute after the restart, the position established after Chris Cusiter had missed the kick-off completely. Cuthbert found himself opposite wee Greig Laidlaw, who had come up out of the defensive line. The 6ft 6in winger had broken the tackles of bigger men in the first half and did so again with ease.

Then came Scotland’s next howler, accompanied by a twist of injustice. A Welsh hand clearly intervened with a knock-on as Scotland were building an attack but none of the officials noticed it. Jonathan Davies hacked on the loose ball and Nick de Luca took him out in the chase, which was spotted by the touch judge. Cue yellow card number one. And try number two.

Jamie Roberts broke following a lineout a few minutes later and Scotland were backpedalling – not a comfortable thing to be doing with a three-quarter missing against one of the biggest back lines in history. The overlap was inevitable and Cuthbert sent Halfpenny clear for the first of his two tries.

Cue yellow card number two. Roberts broke again, fed Toby Faletau and from the breakdown a retreating Rory Lamont took out James Hook in an offside position. A scrum was set up on Scotland’s five-metre line and again the try was inevitable, even though De Luca was allowed back to witness it. Dan Lydiate, the man of the match, fed Mike Phillips, who sent Halfpenny in for his second try in the unattended corner.

Scotland were shell-shocked, having quite possibly had the better of the first half. They had looked comfortable at half-time when the scoreline read 3-3. After 55 minutes it read 27-6.

If only the agony had ended there for Scotland. They had been languishing in a try-less desert for four matches.

Having bombed chance after chance in the defeat by England, they played with an obvious determination to end that drought. Their efforts reached a pitch at the end of the first half, when a break by Rory Lamont had helped them to a position on the tryline. But as Allan Jacobsen lunged to complete the long journey to that first try in ages, he knocked on.

The cruelty became unbearable in the 61st minute. Stuart Hogg, an early replacement for Max Evans, whose brother Thom suffered a career-ending injury at the Millennium Stadium two years ago, was on hand to finish a fine passage of play, following Sean Lamont’s break.

Hogg nearly dropped the ball but managed to gather it before dotting it down. Not so, said Romain Poite, the referee. He decided that Hogg had knocked on and disallowed the try, incorrectly as it turned out.

But the wait was over three minutes later, when Hogg almost crossed the whitewash again but this time Laidlaw nipped in from the base of the ruck to finish off the job - a try at last and scored with Scotland still a man down.

Irony, injustice and heartbreak heaped on top of the tribulations against England; the pain for Scotland is becoming too much. This was only a little less gut-wrenching than the defeat here two years ago, which had also featured two yellow cards.

But, whatever the drama on the field, the story remains the same and an increasingly impressive Wales team like the way their tale is unfolding.

WALES:Halfpenny (Cardiff Blues); Cuthbert (Blues), J Davies (Scarlets), Roberts (Blues; S Williams, Scarlets,78), North (Scarlets; Hook, Perpignan, ht); Priestland (Scarlets), Phillips (Bayonne; L Williams, Blues, 75); Jenkins (Blues), Bennett (Ospreys; Owens, Scarlets, half-time), A Jones (Ospreys; James, Ospreys, 73), R Jones (Ospreys, capt; Reed, Scarlets, 75), Evans (Ospreys), Lydiate (NG Dragons, Powell, Sale, 73), Shingler (Scarlets), Faletau (NG Dragons).

SCOTLAND: R Lamont (Glasgow); Jones (Edinburgh), De Luca (Edinburgh), S Lamont (Scarlets), Evans (Castres; Hogg, Glasgow, 16); Laidlaw (Edinburgh), Cusiter (Glasgow; Blair, Edinburgh, 49); Jacobsen (Edinburgh), Ford (Edinburgh, capt; Lawson, Gloucester, 72), Cross (Edinburgh; Kalman, Glasgow, 58), Gray (Glasgow), Hamilton (Glasgow; Kellock, Glasgow, 58), Strokosch (Gloucester; Barclay, Glasgow, 46), Rennie (Edinburgh), Denton (Edinburgh).

Referee: Romain Poite (France).

Guardian Service