The emotion of the Scotland players at full-time here perhaps told you everything you needed to know about the importance of this afternoon. Their buildup to this World Cup has been mired in controversy, with Bryan Easson confirming his departure after this tournament as well as ongoing contractual disputes surrounding many of their top stars.<\/p>\n
But all those factors, and all that motivation, felt like it blended together to deliver a stunning performance and a significant victory. With the might of Canada and the slightly less problematic Fiji also in Pool B, it was not inconceivable to suggest this was the most important game of the opening weekend, doubling up as a straight shootout for a place in the knockout stages.<\/p>\n
Games between these two sides are notoriously close; no Scottish supporter needs reminding about Keira Bevan\u2019s 86th-minute penalty<\/a> which split the sides at the last World Cup. But this was different, with Easson\u2019s side magnificent to take a sizeable step towards the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n Easson perhaps summed it up best post-match. \u201cA performance like that doesn\u2019t really surprise us,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s extremely satisfying; we were ruthless in attack and defensively we made Wales look pretty ordinary.\u201d He is not wrong: there were times here when Wales were made to look sub-par.<\/p>\n They must now, in all probability, defeat Canada and Fiji to qualify unless the Fijians can pull off a shock against Scotland next week. Their head coach, Sean Lynn, said: \u201cI\u2019ve just said to the players that\u2019s just not good enough. We said we wanted to be physical and credit to Scotland, they bullied us off the park. You can\u2019t start both halves like that.\u201d<\/p>\n This was Scotland\u2019s biggest-ever victory over Wales, and their biggest margin of victory in a World Cup game since 1994, with the tone set inside 55 seconds as Francesca McGhie finished a fine move down the left to break the deadlock. It would not be the last time Scotland would exploit that area of the pitch across the course of the afternoon.<\/p>\n Francesca McGhie celebrates with teammates after scoring Scotland\u2019s second try. Photograph: Tom Jenkins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Wales responded with a try for co-captain Alex Callender but in truth, the greater moments of dominance on the game line belonged to Scotland. They went back ahead when McGhie claimed her second before Leia Brebner-Holden finished another patient piece of attacking play after Wales initially halted a break in midfield.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n A penalty from Bevan either side of the second and third Scottish tries kept it mildly in the balance at the break, with Wales trailing by nine. But when McGhie completed her hat-trick after the restart in a carbon copy of her first try to clinch the bonus point, the writing was very much on the wall for Wales.<\/p>\n They survived a 10-minute period without Gwen Crabb on the field but shortly after she returned, Scotland pushed further ahead when Evie Gallagher cut through. There was even time for Emma Orr to add a sixth try with two minutes remaining but by then, the damage had long since been done to Wales\u2019 qualification hopes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The emotion of the Scotland players at full-time here perhaps told you everything you needed to know about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5009],"tags":[748,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-367754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scotland","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-scotland","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115079271251582260","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}