Ireland v Scotland reaction: ‘As leader of this side I’m bitterly disappointed with what happened’

STUART HOGG says he apologised to the rest of the Scotland squad for being one of six players who left the team hotel to visit an Edinburgh bar last weekend.

Details of what exactly happened remain sketchy. Crucially, it is not clear whether an explicit rule was broken or the players involved merely showed poor judgement. And Scottish Rugby are adamant that they don’t want to discuss the matter beyond the vague statement issued when the story broke on Friday afternoon.

However, Hogg conceded that he and the other players who took part in the illicit excursion – Finn Russell, Ali Price, Darcy Graham, Sam Johnson and Sione Tuipulotu – had let themselves and their team-mates down.

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“For us, we held our hands up. We knew we made a mistake. We just got on with making sure we prepared in the best possible way,” said Hogg. “It was a challenging week, but it was one of our best weeks of preparation,” he added. “We stuck together and got on with our jobs.

“We just want to concentrate on doing what we can. We all want to stay connected as a team. Players, coaches and management, that’s everything that matters to us. Everything else is irrelevant.”

Asked to confirm that he had said sorry to the rest of the squad, he replied: “I did. I held my hands up and said that we made a mistake. The first 40 minutes was probably the best rugby we’ve played this campaign. We’ll probably concentrate on that.

“What’s out there is out there. For us, everything we want will remain in house.”

Asked if he is concerned about losing the captaincy, Hogg snapped: “I don’t know how many times I need to say it. I apologised and I put my hands up.  As leader of this side I’m bitterly disappointed with what happened. I can’t sit here and say that I’m not disappointed.

“I was annoyed and frustrated, but I can’t go back and change anything. I know exactly what you’re after here and you’re not going to get it.”

The full-back’s mood darkened further when asked about the incident at the start of the second half, when he opted to go alone instead of feeding one of the three players queueing up inside with the line at their mercy only to end up being dandled into touch.

“A lot of good stuff happened in that game,” he said. “I backed my ability to score in the corner and on another day I probably do, but you’re looking at five seconds of an 80-minute performance.

“We were very frustrated with the outcome of the match,” he concluded. “Unfortunately, in the second half, we just gave away a few too many penalties [Scotland gave away 15 over the course of the match].

“It’s frustrating because I felt like we were in the game. But you have to stay in every single moment in Test match rugby, especially against a top side like Ireland.”

Head coach Gregor Townsend was also keen to draw a line under the incident. “You’re disappointed with a number of things,” he said, attempting to portray the matter as just one more minor mishap. “Things you do as a coach – things about the game plan, things that the players do, and then sometimes you’re disappointed with the referee. Things happen.

“Obviously what happened on Sunday was disappointing – so was today’s result. But in groups, in families, you have these moments where you could choose to come together, learn from it, and I believe that’s what the team did throughout this week in the way they trained.

“They fronted up today. I know, rightly, people will talk about the result, and that’s the main thing when you play international rugby, but I saw a performance today that was better than most of our performances this year. Certainly in the way we started the game and into the second half. It wasn’t good enough to win the game, but I was proud of what the team did other than that.”

Pushed on ‘The Edinburgh Six’ Townsend stated: “Look, I think we’ve had a statement already about this. It was a private matter, that private discussions and decisions would be made within the group. Anything on the back of that is just gossip.

“So we move on. We’ve moved on from that. There’s nothing really to say more than that. We dealt with that in house and we had our best training week of the Championship.”

Questioned about his relationship with Hogg, Townsend added: “If you want a relationship with someone that’s all above the surface and if anything bad happens then it’s not going to be a close relationship. But if you have one-on-one conversations over certain subjects that are tough to have, then you’re going to have a closer relationship in the long term.

“It was an incident and has been dealt with. And as Stuart mentioned, he apologised to the group. That’s all I’m going to say on it. If I went into details, it would be a long story.

“Once you have an incident – I don’t know if that’s too strong a word, it’s something that happened –  I was delighted with the reaction of the group and how we focused on our task building into today’s game and how we played.

“Discipline [on the pitch] has been an issue this year and it can be more than one thing,” he went on. “Against France, it was our attack where we gave away a lot of penalties around the jackal area.

“Today it was probably a mix. When the opposition have you under pressure in your 22, that’s when you’re going to give more penalties up. Probably addressing that would help a lot – not allowing teams into our 22.

“I felt our set-piece defence was very good today. Ireland had over 20 lineouts and our maul defence stood firm. Our scrum got better and better as the game went on –  we won a few penalties in that area. But if teams have you under pressure you’re probably going to give up more penalties – and Ireland had us under pressure.”

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