With all the talk of potential quarter-final showdowns against New Zealand or South Africa, it’s tempting to forget about Scotland.

Make no mistake, that opening game against Scotland in Yokohama is the pool decider. I had planned on tracking Japan, Russia and Samoa in the build-up to the World Cup but all three sides will have absolutely nothing for Ireland on the evidence I’ve seen in the Pacific Nations Cup and their friendlies to date.

Japan are the best of them, but Samoa and Russia, in particular, are so far behind the curve of top-level test rugby that there’s little to look at in advance bar how weak they are in absolutely every department compared to any combination we could look to field against them.

So that places a huge premium on that 80 minutes against Scotland. In that context, how they performed against two pretty strong French selections is well worth a look – so that’s what I did.

Scotland lost the first game against France 32-3 in a bitty, fragmented performance and won the return leg 17-14 in a scrappy day out in Murrayfield. I’ll be reluctant to read too much into the results themselves at this stage as every Northern Hemisphere side is trying to time their run to Japan as best they can and every group is at a different point with regards to fitness, cohesion and match sharpness.

That said, when it comes to the Quarter Final Before The Quarter Final nature of our group’s opening game, both Scotland and ourselves will be deploying some groundwork to prepare for that 80 showdown. I won’t focus on individuals too much because if I was, this would be a Get A Load of How Good Hamish Watson Is article, and there’s only so many GIFs I can make of one player before it gets a little weird.

What I will focus on is the work that Scotland look like they have been doing with Ireland in mind, based on the scouting they’ll have done on Ireland’s performances so far in 2019.

Weakness And Strength

I’ve been watching 2019 Scotland a lot over the last few days and one area of weakness stands out to me – their front five and heavy ball-carrying rotation. In big games, Scotland’s front five and primary ball carriers consistently lose metres collectively on the gainline and the same was true in both French games. They have a mobile and athletic back row – with Watson being the standout – but their close-range ball carriers are a consistent weakness for them when trying to generate momentum between the 22s.

If you’re a coach with a “weak” tight five and heavy ball-carrying rotation, relatively speaking, you are almost forced into playing more expansively than you would typically expect at test level. Luckily for Scotland, the tools you need to play expansively effectively are pacy, strike running backs, a very mobile back row and a fly-half capable of playing with width and tempo.

Pacy, Strike Running Backs: Stuart Hogg, Blair Kinghorn, Sean Maitland, Darcy Graham, Huw Jones, Sam Johnson
Mobile Back Row: John Barclay, Hamish Watson, Magnus Bradbury
Fly-half Capable of Playing with Width and Tempo: Finn Russell, Adam Hastings

So Scotland have a weakness – their front five – but have all the players you’d want to play around that weakness.

Openside Structures

Over both games, you can see Scotland sticking with their primary way of attacking in that middle third. Here’s a typical three-tiered Scottish big openside structure;

The target area for this structure is, as it usually is with Scotland, the edge of the opposition’s primary defensive line, which I’ve highlighted above in dark blue. To get there, Scotland have to play with width, screens and layered attacking tiers.

They don’t really play with a three-man pod in the hammer zone like Ireland have done over the past few years – the third man closest to the ruck is usually a ruck support option – but they like a tip on to break past a sloppy “C” defender.

Scotland like to overload their big openside plays like this – you’ll see 10 players in this structure – as it gives them a lot of inside and outside pass options once the ball gets into the edge spaces.

When we run the phase through, you get a very typical Scottish openside attack with multiple pinch runners and three passes.

It didn’t work in this instance – very little did for Scotland in that first game against France – but it gives you an idea of how they want to attack in these spaces. Given the way Ireland defend under Farrell – lots of defensive numbers combined with edge pressure – and how costly our decision making has been in those same edge spaces that Scotland like to attack at times over the past year, I’d expect Townsend to approach Yokohama in a way we can predict.

You’ll see them go this multi-tiered structure again and again over the course of both games.

When Scotland have a smaller openside to work with, you’ll see them structure themselves more conservatively to set a central ruck point where they have multiple “seam” plays to attack the space between the last forward and first back. Here’s a pretty decent example off Hogg at first receiver.

Even here, they go for the extra width to Bhatti rather than the short option to Toolis. They lose possession in the collision but it’s the setup position that’s important. Off centre-field ruck position, Scotland have a few nice preset strike movements – here’s one that stood out to me from the first French game.

This kind of movement would be something that Ireland would be particularly vulnerable to given our defensive structure off centre-field ruck position. Scotland lost three players to the previous ruck compared to France’s two and made no gain line but, crucially, they got quick ball that pressurised France’s fringe defence.

Price’s support line off Hogg’s inside shoulder line and offload is super dangerous to an unbalanced high press, and Scotland will want to target Ireland’s heavy fringe scramble. Look out for a strike like this in Yokohama.

They brought out a little wrinkle to their kicking game that I think will get an outing against Ireland’s defensive system and will target the specifics of our full-back placement when defending close to the 22. It didn’t work exactly as planned – although the outcome wasn’t the worst – but you can see the intention.

Price’s kick was a little off of where it needed to be but you can see McGuigan was looking for a ball in behind the space of the advancing winger.

Look for a variation of this in Yokohama if Price or Laidlaw spot our second layer defender tracking the #10 on a shallow line with an advanced winger on a blitz. These plays all try to subvert what teams have found to be very effective against Scotland on the defensive side of the ball – staying on your feet and driving back their set up carries until Scotland are forced to kick the ball away.

Looking at both French matches, I think Scotland showed a little more structure in the game they lost, strangely enough. I thought they were more than a little fortunate to win the return game in Murrayfield in that the try that brought them back into the contest before halftime at 14-3 came from an unforced French error and the winning try came from (a) scrum position earned by of their own botched lineouts getting a handy knock-on and (b) some turnstile defence that probably made for a house of horror video review on Monday.

Scotland’s attack in open play didn’t look great in either game against France, in my opinion, because both times they came across a tight five that stopped most of their phase play setups. That combined with a strong, mobile back row and a midfield that “filled the space” around the tight five quite forced Scotland to play wider than even they like. They coughed up their first try last weekend to fairly basic French line speed.

France aren’t sitting down on any of Scotland’s pinch carries (in fairness, some of the animation from the Scottish forwards is very poor) and it means Scotland are going deeper into their attacking tiers while under serious line speed pressure.

In my opinion, Scotland are a good power outside back away from really competing at the top level consistently from an attacking perspective. They don’t have any big outside back hitters in their current squad – Duhan Van Der Merwe can’t become eligible quickly enough – so it means that they struggle to consistently break down strong, well-balanced packs in most contests.

Ireland have structural weaknesses in defence that Scotland can absolutely exploit if we aren’t careful and the availability of Keith Earls as our primary big openside edge defender in tandem with Kearney is a vital component of managing their specific threat.

I’ll be watching Scotland’s attacking work over the next two games against Georgia but that will feature more set-piece coverage I think. I’ll have an article on their big defensive issues in the next few days.