Six Nations 2022: Wales v Scotland - why Townsend's men lost in Cardiff

Finn Russell's yellow card proved costly as Scotland slipped to narrow defeat in CardiffSNS

Finn Russell's yellow card proved costly as Scotland slipped to narrow defeat in Cardiff

By Tom English
BBC Scotland

The entire plodding predictability of it all was the thing, the dreary throwback to an age where Scotland in pursuit of victory had no ideas, no penetration and no threat.

The final minutes at the Principality Stadium were a reminder of the fruitless grindathons of previous years, where 10, 15 and 20 phases came to nothing, where the final whistle came as a blessed relief, an end to the hapless banging at a door that never looked like opening.

Scotland are not out of the championship because of this. Their hopes of getting in the shake-up for the first time in 22 years are not dead and buried on the back of one defeat. A victory over France at Murrayfield in a fortnight - they'll be underdogs, but powered by anger as Wales were on Saturday - will put them back in the fight. That's not the point, though.

The point is we thought they were better than this. Scotland had won seven of their previous 11 championship matches. The four they'd lost were close. Last season they got done by Wales in Edinburgh because Zander Fagerson got sent off early in the second half. They lost to Ireland because their lineout completely fell apart.

Specific things cost them, but on Saturday there was no one thing that brought about their defeat. It was a myriad things. It was another narrow loss but the scoreboard was hardly a reflection of what went on.

Scotland left town with a losing bonus point they scarcely deserved. If we thought they had the minerals to go to Cardiff and finally soak up the local noise and colour and win then we were wrong. This was the most troubling Scotland defeat since the 2019 World Cup.

It wasn't so much that Scotland lost, it was the way they lost. They played no rugby. The negativity in their play was arresting. They seemed to want to kick and defend their way to victory, they seemed so satisfied about the strength of their much-lauded defence that they didn't think they had to do a whole lot in attack to get the job done, that Wales would implode in the latter stages as England did last weekend.

If the idea was to soak up Welsh fury before striking out late on then it came unstuck, in part by the thunder Wales brought to the occasion but, equally, by the desperate lack of accuracy and ambition in Scotland's game. There were was a lovely try from Darcy Graham and the odd line break, but overall it was a barren performance. That was the thing that shocked. Not that they lost - nothing new there in Cardiff - but that they lost without ever really looking like they were going to win.

They didn't score beyond the 48th minute. What happened next? Finn Russell got charged down, George Turner got done at a breakdown, Jonny Gray spilled ball, Turner got done again, Russell got binned, Duhan van der Merwe coughed up possession and then coughed it up again.

And, of course, there was the endgame. Twenty phases of nothingness. Wales - and fair play to them for winning after getting annihilated every minute of every day since Dublin - soaked it all up with relative ease. Scotland were just hitting and hoping at that point. They went down meekly, cowed by the dragon's roar.

Scotland conceded eight penalties on the floor and 13 in all. The most costly one was the Russell yellow. The fly-half does things that only world-class players can do. He also does things that world-class players would rarely, if ever, do.

That's two yellow cards and a red in his last seven championship games for Scotland. Against England at Twickenham and France in Paris his departure didn't bring the ultimate punishment of defeat, but on Saturday it did. Every Scotland player, save for a handful, were culpable in their own way in Cardiff and Russell is part of that.

Six Nations 2022: Dan Biggar kicks 15 points to help Wales beat Scotland - highlights

It could be argued, strongly, that of all the defeats in Cardiff - now nine straight losses in 20 years - this was one of the greatest failures. In all the others Wales were powered by world-class players, but that wasn't the case this time.

Wales thoroughly deserved their win but they didn't need to hit any great heights. Dan Biggar orchestrated things wonderfully and had a supporting cast of driven men, but this wasn't vintage Wales.

None of the ghosts of Scottish defeats past were present here. Alun Wyn Jones, Ken Owens, Dan Lydiate, Justin Tipuric, Taulupe Faletau, Josh Navidi, George North, Leigh Halfpenny. Scottish fans have recurring nightmares about what those guys have done to their team in Cardiff over the years. They're all out of the game right now. Wales were shorn of giants. Scotland had everybody bar Jamie Ritchie available. And yet.

This was an abject Scotland wasting a fantastic opportunity to go two wins from two for the first time in their Six Nations history. It's a bit pathetic they're still waiting to hit that mark.

We know they are better than this. We know because we've seen the evidence for two years. They won in Llanelli, they won at Twickenham, they won in Paris. Of course, the inescapable truth about all of those victories on the road is they were achieved in empty stadiums. The big test going to Cardiff was whether Scotland had the ability and the bottle to repeat those successes in one of the great atmospheres of world rugby.

The answer was hauntingly obvious. Another Cardiff tale of woe added to the pile.