I’ll do this match report from a Scottish point of view as the merits of the AB’s performance have been debated vigorously already.

What a crazy game. Set the alarm, pissed off the wife crawling out of bed and scrambling for my contact lenses and was downstairs in a flash to flick on the telly.

Who’s who I wondered aloud. What is with these crazy look-alike jerseys ? I have to confess I fell asleep for a few minutes and woke up to see Scottish number 7 Kelly Brown make a searing break and link.  “Come on Scotland, summon some of that Braveheart spirit !!!” awwww oops, it was actually Richie McCaw. Also what was with the pre recorded anthems ?!?!?! terrible, talk aboot the tightass scots saving a bit of coin !!

As for the players well many of them had games to forget. I’d heard a great deal about 1.94 metre, 110 kilo beast Nikki Walker on the wing. AJ Whetton, whose dry commentary has grown on me over the course of the cup kindly informed viewers that Walkers nickname is “Numpty”. Pretty fucken apt I reckon, all he did was knock on twice, miss a tackle on Sivivatu and get stopped in a spot tackle by Nick Evans ?!?!?! No disrespect Nick you’re a fine player but hardly a huge hitter, gee whiz talk about a let down. Don’t get me wrong I wasn’t expecting another Lomu but I was at least expecting a Rougerie, Horgan or Lamont. This guy should never play for Scotland again.

Same with Craig Smith. Demolished in the scrums, driven back by Luke McAlister, the most notable things about him was his controversial choice of Jersey, the old long sleeve/ no sleeve combo reminiscent of a girl I used to go out with. Lets just say she looked damn better in it than he did !! Replacement 1st five Dan Parks knocked on twice under no pressure, actually not too bad by his standards. Seemed to kick ok as well, ok maybe not that well his team did score the bagel after all.  Scotlands two props ( particularly Smiths replacement ) looked like a pair of Conan the Barbarians on steroids yet still got dealt to by Hayman and Woodcock, proof once again that I know 3 fifths of five eighths of fuck all about front row play, must be down to better technique, ask Red Beard or Bartman they seem to know about propping. One notable exception in the pack was Dave Callum, good gutsy performance from a guy whose pack was getting its arse handed to it on a plate. Actually broke a couple of tackles IIRC !!!

I read somewhere that a Portuguese electrician in Whangarei had to have a beer for every point his country got against the AB’s, 13 ales later he was rather worse for wear. While the Scots, nations of pissheads that they are, wouldn’t dare run the risk of adhering to such a bet you’d think that if they did a good dozen and a half would have been consumed. Lucky for them or else the Royal Mile would have been a quiet place to get on the piss that night. Not to be, at no time did they ever threaten the line. Totally bereft of ideas in attack they were. Their only chance was when Walker knocked on with no one in front of him, perhaps he should move to lock, looked to have the pace of one. As discussed before ALL Scotland wanted to do was keep the score down, they did this reasonably well to some extent but man oh man I was hoping for one or two tries from them. A friend of mine from Stirling paid over 300 quid for two tickets to watch her B team get hammered and not even put a point on the board. Shocking. Bet she was pissed off !

When Scotland get their much vaunted back row on deck and the Lamont brothers out wide they will be a threat to Italy and should knock them over to make it through to the quarters. Coach Frank Hadden seems to be a pretty shrewd dude ( I hate the way any Scot with half a brain is called Canny so instead I will use the word “shrewd”, also rhymes nicely with dude ) so as someone who keeps more than half an eye on their performances I will be hoping that these key guys come back and beat the spaghetti eaters. From there maybe a semi final berth ?!?!?!?

Stranger things have happened.