SCOTLAND BRAVEHEARTS will travel to Dublin for Saturday’s fixture against Ireland Wolfhounds intent on exacting retribution for the 38-30 home reverse two weeks earlier.
Ireland prevailed at the Royal High School, Edinburgh after battling back from 18-6 adrift at the break, thanks largely to half-a-dozen unanswered tries which helped establish a 38-18 lead.
Scotland closed strongly with a couple of touchdowns to suggest that the match at Garda, Westmanstown, could quite feasibly go the way of the visitors.
The Bravehearts will, however, have to beware of the threat of Wolfhounds winger James Buckeridge, who finished with a hat-trick. Morisi McGoon, Jack Wise, Julian Power and Johnny Campbell also crossed and Eoin Ratchford landed five goals.
Duncan Arthur, Louis Senter and Ross Moir had dotted down in the first half for Scotland while Terry Logan and Sean McKervail nipped over in the closing stages. George Shannon landed all five goals.
Ireland coach Sean Cody told League Express: “We were very clear from the start that our expectation was to win every game we played, in fact every message that goes into the WhatsApp since it was set up has ended with a very simple ‘2/2’.
“We are halfway there now but halfway is worthless without backing it up.
“I’ve always had the view that when you win but aren’t happy with the performance, you’re in a pretty good place.
“Our job now is to fix the performance while keeping the result the same.
“We were 18-6 down away from home, with some lads having been up since 2.00am travelling. It would have been very easy to throw in the towel and make excuses, but as long as we can keep that level of resolve and fix other details, we will hopefully be in a good place.”
He reflected on the match in Edinburgh: “Anyone at that game would tell you it was certainly entertaining.
“You could probably see in the first ten or 15 minutes that the lack of time together meant both teams had big individual moments without maybe having the fluidity you’d look for as a coach.
“The Scotland boys have some real quality and experience in certain areas of the pitch but we started to get some success when we stood up defensively. That gave us a platform to play our game, as opposed to maybe the way Scotland wanted us to play.
“We have some really fantastic players in our squad and they were all picked for a reason. Once they started to believe that, and maybe put more trust in the man outside them, it started to click.”