Hive stadium welcomed the boys in blue, Scotland ‘A’ and the fiery South Americans, Chile Concordes. With the cold, dark and frosty weather, it was expected that Scotland would have the upper hand. However, the Concordes brought their fight and gave the A team a run for their money. Alex Brattesani reports:
Scotland started strong with high intensity, pushing their attacking wall and applying fierce pressure to the Chilean defence. After two minutes, Aaron Reed scored an unconverted try after receiving a sneaky yet smart pass from Ross McCann. Although this was a cracking display of Scotland’s ability, it was simply the start of an intense and ‘yo-yo’ styled game.
After Reed’s try, the Chileans reacted quickly to the speedy Scots, applying constant pressure and picking up a loose pass from Scotland’s captain, Stafford McDowall. Chile’s Luca Starbuchhi sprinted to the attacking end with no one to catch him. After Starbucchi’s impressive reaction, Chile led with a conversion by Santiago Videla.
Shortly after Videla’s conversion, McDowall was granted a yellow card and sent to the sin bin for an illegal clear-out, leaving the home team a man down just before halftime.
Halftime Score: Scotland 5-7 Chile.
McDowell returns in the 44th minute and despite the return to 15 men, Chile is continuously adding offensive pressure. McDowell’s second-half presence was cut short after being replaced by Glasgow Warrior youngster, Ben Afshar, hoping some fresh legs will boost Scotland’s performance. However, sharply after this change, Videla added a successful penalty after another offence – to make it 5-10.
The atmosphere of the final 25 minutes fused undeniable tension between Scotland and Chile. With Scotland behind, Tom Dodd conceived a try after following an excellent and impressive break by Afshar. Ross Thompson then drop-kicked a successful conversion as the kicking tee was nowhere to be seen; Scotland now taking the lead, 12-10.
After the athletic prowess of Afshar and Dodd, the pitch welcomes an abundance of replacements for Scotland – James Bhatti, Harri Morris and Liam McConnell – creating a shift in positions for the home side.
The 66th minute saw a Scotland line out on the edge of the try line, yet Chile’s number 11, Mattias Garafulic intercepts and darts down the pitch, making the Chile crowd roar with hope. Garafulic was fast, but not fast enough as he was hunted down by the home team, not making it past the halfway line.
Since Garafulic’s blast, Scotland switch on the offensive pressure, struggling to push over the line. With 10 minutes left, a perfect opportunity sparks with Jamie Dobie making an exceptional passage of play and passes over to Reed on the left wing, but sadly overshoots.
Again, Scotland welcomes fresh faces onto the pitch; Jare Oguntibeju, Fin Richardson and Jack Brown. Shortly after the replacements entered the pitch, Scotland was awarded a penalty try after Chile collapsed a line-out; accumulating a sin bin send-off for Raimundo Martínez.
Despite Martínez’ send-off, Chile fans were in a frenzy in the final minute, watching Nicolas Garafolic intercept Scotland’s passage of play, executing a powerful drive and finishing with a try, followed by a conversion from his brother, Mattias – ending the game in victory to Scotland.
After the intense and nail-biting game, recent Scotland debutant, Freddy Douglas was deservingly awarded player-of-the-match.
Full Time Score – Scotland 19 – 17 Chile
Vice Captain Jamie Dobie’s comments:
“I think we definitely expected a tough game from them. I know obviously a lot of us had experience from playing them in summer in a full test match and looking back at that game we saw the first 30, well the one in summer, the problems that they gave us and to be honest they brought that for the whole 80 this week. So, they’ve had a bit of time together these last few weeks and I know obviously they’ve been hurting from their result last week.”
“We obviously found it really hard in the first half to break their defence down. To be fair to them, they slowed our breakdowns down a lot and we couldn’t really get fire and couldn’t really get our shape going. But we knew that the hard work that we put in in that first half would pay and I think we saw that in the second half and I think we really left a few more chances out there that we could have scored… We put a lot of hard graft in there to get the rewards in the last 20 and although we didn’t always convert it, I think it was pleasing to see the opportunities were created.”
“I think we could have controlled that middle third of the pitch a bit more. We found ourselves playing a lot of attack and probably tiring ourselves out. I think our defence was pretty solid apart from the discipline. So, obviously, tidying up the discipline, it was all the penalties that were sort of out of system and unneeded ones that were causing us stress rather than when we were in system. We were really comfy and having some really good defence sets. So, it was about tidying those up and then coming out the second half and getting pay from the work that we put in.”
The Autumn Nation Series is coming to a close, but the Guinness Six Nations are just around the corner, kicking off in early February – not one to miss!
