RWC 2015: Scotland and Wales almost upset odds and had spirit to frighten southern sides

COMMENT: Celtic warriors show the defiance so lacking in hosts

Greig Laidlaw (L) of Scotland looks dejected after the 2015 Rugby World Cup Quarter Final match between Australia and Scotland at Twickenham Stadium (Getty Images Europe)

The Scots had been finding some black humour in the face of a developing southern whitewash. “The last northern hemisphere side standing,” they were calling themselves before the game on Sunday, as their people walked down in the Twickenham village sunshine, past the piper playing the theme tune to Star Wars. It is safe to say that they were not taking themselves too seriously.

And though there could be no consolation, no words and certainly no adequate way to rationalise the manner of defeat for their players as they stood on the Twickenham turf in the steam and the sheeting rain, Stuart Hogg’s face streaked with disappointment and not far from tears, they contributed richly to what had been a quarter-final weekend of sublimity from start to finish.

One of the ubiquitous advertisements of the past five weeks talks of “turning the world oval” and in the course of two days the sport has lived up to that. When England absented themselves so anaemically, overwhelmed by Australia here two weeks ago, there were questions about a missed opportunity to grow rugby within these shores. It has taken two Celtic nations to rewrite the script of England’s 2015 World Cup.

It should be said that the manner of Scotland’s defeat, to Bernard Foley’s late penalty, was deeply iniquitous, because their progress came to hinge on the minutiae of what the ubiquitous television match official can and cannot examine. To those for whom rugby union has become something new in the past month or so, the letters TMO – lighting up the screen in the Rugby World Cup font – have been an all-seeing, sometimes pointless, intrusion. But a determination as to whether a penalty should or should not be given is not within its remit, the TMO guidelines somehow stipulate. So a decision which should have been an Australian scrum at worst stood as a penalty – three points. And so we were treated to the undignified sight of referee Craig Joubert running like holy hell for the sanctuary of the changing rooms at the end, a water bottle thrown at him and howls of injustice echoing in his ears.

The Scotland coach, Vern Cotter, was asked why he thought this sprint for the stands might have taken place and said he did not know. Greig Laidlaw, sitting to his right, was asked if there were consolations and he was too shell-shocked even to say that he could not find any. That’s how the Scottish press conference was: an occasion punctuated with long silences as the two men tried, through a reflex reaction, to find something to say but were not always able.

The rugby spoke for them. They were helped by an Australian performance which bore no resemblance to what England encountered here – Foley missing his three first-half kicks, spilling the ball and dropping it in front of the grandstand – but their contribution defied every conceivable logic of resource and numbers. Scotland has a fraction of the players to draw upon and its game has been living for years with its abject failure to cope with the professionalism which southern hemisphere nations like Australia drove forward with hunger. First there were four Scottish districts side. Then three. Now two. The almighty mess has mirrored the ham-fisted way Wales mishandled its own progress from the amateur era, by asking Valleys heartland communities to develop a love of new regional sides, some of which folded, others of which were widely abhorred.

Only now do the Scots seem to be getting to grips with professionalism, and Sunday was testimony to that. The Glasgow Warriors side which had furnished Cotter with no fewer than 17 of his players for this World Cup – and other nations with five more – is perhaps the best club force Scotland has ever had. (No club side has sent as many men to this tournament.) The Scottish Rugby Union, running and funding it, and the nascent Edinburgh, has allowed them to deconstruct the economics of club rugby which have made England and France rich. It was not by chance that Glasgow won the Pro12 last year.

Neither was it by chance that Finn Russell, Mark Bennett, Peter Horne and Hogg, those who have made Glasgow so worth watching, were at the fulcrum; part of the extraordinary spectacle which had Twickenham bellowing its delight at a try against Scotland, put down by Adam Ashley-Cooper, being ruled out. A knock-on as that ball was gathered from a driving maul was detected by TMO. That it only might have been called on to detect Nick Phipps touch in the all-decisive closing phase of play.

As realisation dawned that the horrors of Scotland’s Six Nations really were in the past and that this side dared aspire to win, Laidlaw had seemed to allow himself a grin of happy disbelief. He had just kicked over for 13-5 in his own side’s favour, at the time. In the ensuing evidence of the esprit de corps – Hogg taking Ashley-Cooper at the knees when he seemed to be heading for corner; Bennett grabbing James Slipper’s intercept pass 35 metres out and driving through the sheeting rain for the try line; Laidlaw cajoling and guiding – you saw what Cotter has created. It’s no more or no less than Warren Gatland’s accomplishment with Wales, a side down to third-string players some of their most avid followers had never heard of, who took South Africa to the wire, nonetheless.

Cotter was asked about Gatland’s observation that the southern hemisphere’s domination which delivers them a semi-final sweep for the first time was in part due to a climate which better allows them to develop their skills. “You could use that I suppose,” he replied, struggling to compute the fact that it will not be his side who will be venturing on and demonstrating that spirit and focus can defy all the wealth and fine weather in the world.