‘We could have beat the All Blacks by 20′ – Scottish Rugby boss’ bold claim as verdict issued on Gregor Townsend’s future
Scotland fly-half Finn Russell and an inset of Gregor Townsend.
Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend is safe from the sack and will see out his contract through to the 2027 Rugby World Cup.
That is according to Scottish Rugby chief executive Alex Williamson, who believes that the former fly-half remains the best man for the job.
Pressure has been building on Townsend after an underwhelming Quilter Nations Series, where Scotland thrashed both the USA and Tonga but fell to defeats at the hands of New Zealand and Argentina – in both games, they were in a position where they could win the match.
That, paired with the fact that since he was appointed head coach, Scotland have not finished higher than third place in the Six Nations, has left fans frustrated with the lack of improvement with a ‘golden generation’ of Scottish players.
We could have beaten the All Blacks
Despite the frustration, Williamson insists that Townsend will remain in the role and see out his contract to the next World Cup.
“We entered into the contract with Gregor with the full expectation he is going to take us through to the World Cup – that hasn’t changed,” he told reporters after Scottish Rugby’s annual meeting.
The bigwig concedes that the results in November were disappointing with fans booing the players off the park after the collapse and defeat to Argentina.
However, he says that the union is still confident that they have the right coaching team in place and boldly stated that he believes that Townsend’s charges could have beaten the All Blacks by 20 points.
“The optimism going into the autumn says a lot about the development of the team and I think it would be folly for me to suggest that we weren’t all enormously disappointed not to come out of the games, particularly against New Zealand and Argentina, with at least one win,” he said.
“I personally, for what it’s worth, was really disappointed with the outcome of the New Zealand game, because I actually thought that we could have won that by 20 points.
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“The game against Argentina, to be 21-0 up against a team that are probably in the top four often, particularly when they have all their players together, and to not get over the line, was unbelievably deflating and there’s no doubt about that.”
He added: “I think we have an outstanding coaching group. I think we saw some real progress in a number of areas and I think there was lots to like, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that there was also some things that really didn’t go well in the heat of the moment.
“I think we should continue to be very confident that we’ve got a structure, a coaching group and an ideology about how we want to play rugby in Scotland that we should be confident about – and that’s where we are. I don’t foresee change there.”