GREGOR TOWNSEND (HEAD COACH) - SCOTLAND v ITALY CONFERENCE - 1.2.25

Scotland Head Coach Gregor Townsend was happy with his team's performance v Italy but knows they have to do better against Ireland next up.

[@JamesRattray]

Scotland are a very tidy outfit at last. They have stepped up to another level. A couple of the penalties given to Italy were very border line calls, you can see the Jonny Grey off side in the replay, it must have been inches. The Finn Russell sealing off, one camera angle shows he was just lower than the Italian player. Officials need to remember this is entertainment and consistency is crucial. Having said all that I have huge respect for the job they do, many many years ago when I played, we always said play the rules of the Ref, not our own interpretation of them.

[@IronCurtainTwitcher]

what do you have to do to beat Ireland? Towsnend; "score more points than them" - this should be in every coaches repertoire

[@donuttime2507]

He's right but for me Scotland need to get to the breakdown a little quicker. I'm Scottish but I think we're just a bit slower than the top 5 teams at the breakdown

[@ShanleH]

@@donuttime2507we are one of the quickest teams to the breakdown and have very good line speed too. We also have a very high turnover rate in comparison to the top teams. It’s our error count that’s quite high. Which is to be expected with the style we play, but when you are making such glaringly obvious errors like against Italy you are setting yourself up for a loss. And in all fairness that was mainly Russell who had a very hot and cold game. This was Russell at maybe 40% or 50%. The same performance again, with Russell at full capacity, we put 40 or 50 points on them easily. Russell always grows into tournaments, always makes mistakes in the first game