2025 Women’s Six Nations: Scotland 24-21 Wales
Scotland made it back-to-back Women’s Six Nations wins over Wales for the first time in 20 years as they weathered a storm and hold out for victory. Here are some talking points from a highly entertaining and tense game.
Attacking sparks
After an early, successful passage of Welsh dominance, Scotland showed what their attack was about. A 10-12 axis full of experience and nous, ready to unleash the pace and attacking lines of Emma Orr and the back three.
Throughout the team, Scotland were fully committed to keeping the ball alive, the odd carry into contact to keep the defence honest, but lots of quick interplay and offloads to get the balls into the hands of those speedy, incisive runners.
Scotland not only made the most offloads in round 1 but made a round high 10 line breaks, with four of them for the impressive Francesca McGhie. One of the best examples was in the line break which led to the third try, as a pop pass from Lisa Thomson put Orr through a gap. Scotland were maintaining this approach, even as the ball got slippier and slippier in the heavy rain, with a lot of success (and the odd spill). It was a constant stress for the defence and highly entertaining for the crowd.
The one downside in attack was Scotland once again failed to fully capitalise on chances and get that try scoring bonus point, despite high levels of possession and territory, particularly first half. There were the two ruled out tries, both falling foul to a slight timing error, one at the line out, one in running a support line. And there were a few other times in the red zone after Scotland had worked their way up the field well – a ball in the maul too long slipping out like dropped soap and some loose handling in the 67th minutes were two big opportunities lost. The hope will be that Scotland will be able to keep up that fast pace this weekend and cause problems for a French attack that will be missing its defensive linchpin in Gabrielle Vernier. But they must be more clinical, as they will have to take all their chances against France.
Standards drop on the floor
There were plenty of positives to take from the performance, in particular how connected the defence was. Only 8 tackles missed and there were large parts of the game, particularly first half, where Wales were very well contained and couldn’t find a way past the dark blue wall.
Except when Scotland’s discipline let them down – there were a couple of particularly soft penalties that will have been a source of frustration – it seemed much harder for Wales to progress down the field than Scotland.
One clear area for improvement for Scotland will be making sure that they are more competitive in the battle on the floor at the breakdown. Wales managed twice as many turnovers in the match, 6 to 3. A couple of these were from line breaks where a support player didn’t arrive quick enough, but they also let Wales have an easy out. Perhaps it was a little bit of role clarity that needs finessing – last year Alex Stewart was in the top 4 in the championship for attacking rucks hit.
The stats suggest that despite enjoying the most possession of any team across the round this weekend, Scotland were 4th as a team for attacking ruck arrivals – this maybe to do with the attacking approach detailed above which meant fewer attacking rucks, but they will not want to give France easy turnovers, as they possess much more speed in their backline that Wales.
Classy Nelson
There were plenty of brilliant performers on Saturday, particularly across the back line, but the all-round performance of Helen Nelson was superb. Immaculate from the tee (even for the first ruled out try), driving and organising the attack and linking up with Thomson particularly well and tactically kicking brilliantly, especially in the rainy second half.
Defensively she also played a really important part, winning two turnovers and making 7 tackles, one of which was the huge hit on Kayleigh Powell that caused the ball to go loose, Thomson to kick through and Orr to score the second try.
New members of the family
For many of us, one of the things we love about this team, is how obviously close and supportive they are as a group, and how they bring that togetherness and commitment to each other on to the field. Rachel Malcolm presented Hollie Cunningham with her cap after the match, and during her speech, she said how much Cunningham had brought on and off the field, in training and camp. Malcolm joked “She’s a complete weirdo, but she fits into our weird little family.”
It’s maybe not a comment I would have properly picked up on, except I was at the ‘Good, Scaz, Rugby’ podcast live show before the match, where one of the panel was Amber Reed, recently retired England legend, and Bristol team mate of Cunningham. During that, Reed mentioned that she was really happy to hear that the Scotland girls had been calling her weird because it meant Cunningham was in an environment where she felt comfortable to truly be herself.
It’s pretty rare that a new member of the squad doesn’t seem to fit right in at international level – we’ve seen it with Stewart last year, and McGhie the year before. It is clearly a set up that makes newcomers feel welcome and able to play their best, and we saw that with both Cunningham and Adelle Ferrie’s debuts.
Given the amount of work that the former got through in the early parts of the game when Scotland had possession, it seemed like there was a clear plan to give her plenty of line out ball and carrying opportunities to get through any nerves and make her feel central to the team as soon as possible, and we were rewarded with a really impressive display, with some really tackle busting carries. Ferrie came on late but took responsibility for two critical line out catches and drives in the final, game saving, minutes and will be raring to go again and show even more of what she can do.
Law variations cause confusion
The Six Nations, both men’s and women’s, is probably the biggest rugby gateway to the casual fan in the northern hemisphere, so it’s probably not great that there was confusion on how the bunkers, 20-minute reds, and second yellows are all combining.
We’ll have to assume that the chat around two yellows being a full red unless it’s reviewed by the bunker was not quite right, but World Rugby must reflect on the fact that a lot of people were not.
As fans in the ground, we want as much information as possible, but the displays on the screens were not helping at all, with ‘permanent red’ flashing up when Georgia Evans received her second yellow. In fact, Evans could be replaced after 20 minutes.
I’m still not really convinced by the 20-minute red card and, although in principle I support the concept of the bunker to speed up matches, the lack of transparency from their decisions continues to frustrate. With a World Cup coming up this year that is likely to bring in lots of new fans to the games, we really need clarity and communication – if nothing else so that these are not the topics that dominate the conversation after the game, instead of the excellent rugby on show.
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