Townsend admits Scotland must improve

Editor

Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend believes his side are a work in progress after they edged out Samoa 44-38 at Murrayfield on Saturday.

Despite carding their highest ever score against Samoa, leaking 38 points concerns Townsend ahead of next week’s clash with New Zealand.

"There’s lots of room for improvement but we knew that would be the case," explained Townsend when speaking to Scottish Rugby's website.

"This is the first time this team has played together. We were playing an opposition who are going to force you into errors at times. They’re excellent players.

"We know, in all aspects of the game, that we have to be better. But, we knew that would be the case heading into next week.

"Today’s match probably just highlights a couple of aspects where we definitely need to be better in order to compete with, what are currently, the best team in the world next Saturday."

He added: "Look, the fact we won was obviously great. The team worked tremendously hard in front of great crowd numbers to get that win.

"We were challenged a number of times to begin the first-half and in that second-half and we stayed ahead of the opposition.

"We are aware we’ve got lot of things to work on but we got a win and we scored a great number of points in an international, which is not usually the case at this level, when you’ve got two very good, very physical teams.

"We won the game and we’ll move on. Our player’s focus will be even more increased going into next week. We realise we’re playing against a pretty good attacking team next week and there are things we need to do better."