Six Nations 2019: Ireland will not let depleted Scotland thrive as Italy did
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Six Nations: Blair Kinghorn hat-trick seals opening Scotland win v Italy
There were no surprises at Murrayfield on Saturday. Scotland won with a bit to spare, as everybody expected them to. Stuart Hogg was a whirlwind of activity, Finn Russell was a constant source of creativity. Five tries went in for the home team and some of them were absolute pearlers.
The vulnerability at the end of a day that had a curious air - it never quite had the feeling of a full-blown Six Nations occasion - can't be deemed a shock either. It can be explained away as the inevitable consequence of a team with a 30-point lead taking its foot off the gas, but that's too convenient an argument.
Really good teams don't turn a 30-point lead (with 18 minutes to go) against a side firmly pinned on the ropes into a 13-point victory. No. They go and make it 40 points and 50 points.
Italy, it should be remembered, have limited resources to begin with and they arrived here without Matteo Minozzi, their terrific full-back, Mattia Bellini, their dangerous wing, Marcello Violi, their number one scrum-half, and Jake Polledri, the openside who did such damage to Scotland last year.
They lost Tito Tebaldi just before kick-off. Guglielmo Palazzani came in for him. Palazzani played with a virus that saw him vomiting his way on to the plane in Rome on Wednesday, vomiting all the way to Edinburgh and then vomiting some more when he got there. Palazzani played 80 minutes. Nine minutes from full-time, he scored a try. The wonder was that he didn't celebrate by throwing up under Scotland's sticks.
This should have been a whole lot easier for Scotland. We've seen what they are capable of when they have their frontliners on the pitch, with Ireland, Wales, England, France, Australia, Argentina all beaten at Murrayfield in the past two years. And we've also seen what depths they can sink to when some of the frontliners are not there - Fiji, USA both putting them away on the road.
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Scotland's travails in allowing Italy in for some cringe-makingly soft scores at the end go back to their long and brutal casualty list. It's incredibly rare for a squad to have a full bill of health - Gregor Townsend had 19 men missing from his original 31-man selection and others were invalided out thereafter - but getting close to it is imperative if Scotland are to stand a chance of becoming competitors in the Six Nations.
Townsend doesn't have the luxury of being able to dig deep into the player pool without it seriously damaging Scotland's chances. Ireland can do it, England can do it, Wales do it. Scotland cannot.
Beating Italy was a formality, and some of their stuff in attack was outstanding, but the serious business is upon them now and there are more serious things to come later in the year at the World Cup in Japan. There's no doubting that Scotland, at their best, can make a run for the title some day soon, but everything hinges on them fielding close to their strongest 23.
That means Fraser Brown as understudy to Stuart McInally; it means Zander Fagerson as back-up to WP Nel; it means Sean Maitland in the team and the bench being strengthened by Blair Kinghorn's presence; it means Duncan Taylor and Pete Horne and Jonny Gray being in the 23; it means a back-row of John Barclay, Hamish Watson and Ryan Wilson, with Jamie Ritchie and Josh Strauss ready to add impetus later on.
The bench has never been more critical in Test rugby. Scotland's bench on Saturday consisted of two props who are not first-choice for their club, a hooker making his debut, a back-row and a wing who are playing for Newcastle, the bottom team in the English Premiership, and a young fly-half whose confidence has been shot to pieces over the last few months.
'Ireland will be bunch of angry men'
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They're all good enough to beat Italy, but Ireland? A wounded Ireland? An Ireland that are coming to Murrayfield to make amends for getting blasted off the Aviva turf by England?
Ireland will be in Edinburgh not just to win a Test that may revive their chances of retaining the championship, but also to stave off any fears that last year's Grand Slam/All Black-busting season marked the high watermark of the team and also the concern that they may have, yet again, peaked too early in a World Cup cycle. They will be an angry bunch of men. The memory of what Scotland did to them at Murrayfield two years ago has not gone away.
The hope is that some of Townsend's cavalry will have come down from the hills by next weekend. The bigger hope is that, come the World Cup, all of those guys mentioned earlier are fit and well because, if they are, Scotland are a force to be reckoned with. We know that. We've seen the evidence, at home if not always away from home.
The pity is that Barclay and Watson will be missing next weekend. Scotland are an entirely different proposition when those two are around, an altogether different animal, a beast capable of bringing the kind of mayhem and intensity that can trouble Joe Schmidt's team. Had Scotland taken their multiple chances in the first half in Dublin last season, it would have been a more interesting day than it turned out to be.
On Saturday, England unloaded a physicality on Ireland that Ireland couldn't stand up to. The collisions were won by the visitors, the dominant tackle count in England's favour by a whopping 48-8. "We got bullied," said Schmidt. "You've got to be prepared to give as good as you get and we didn't do it."
You don't need to be Poirot (Hercule, not Jefferson) to figure out what Ireland are going to try to do to Scotland at the weekend. Even without CJ Stander - allowed to play for 62 minutes in Dublin with a fractured cheek and a fractured eye socket - they will come to Edinburgh to batter the Scots into submission, to suffocate the life out of Scotland's elan and prey on their weakest points.
The video of the end-game against Italy gives them a lot to work with. Fundamental to Scotland's chances is their need to pack that bench with class and experience. Townsend can't make the wounded walk again, but he can offer up a prayer or two that enough of them are available to him to meet Ireland's furious challenge head-on.