{"id":562123,"date":"2025-11-10T20:37:23","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T20:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/562123\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T20:37:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T20:37:23","slug":"scotland-17-25-new-zealand-three-things-we-learned-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/562123\/","title":{"rendered":"Scotland 17-25 New Zealand: Three things we learned"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Scotland lacking &#8216;clutch&#8217; in the big moments<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Scott Robertson praised Damien McKenzie&#8217;s &#8220;clutch&#8221; plays that proved decisive as the All Blacks struck late to break Scottish hearts once again.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s something that&#8217;s missing from Scotland&#8217;s armoury when they come up against the very best sides in the world.<\/p>\n<p>The Scots can mix it with anyone in the Test arena, they have shown that time and again.<\/p>\n<p>However, invariably when it comes to the absolutely critical moments, when a Six Nations campaign or an historic victory against the All Blacks is on the line, they lack the killer instinct.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Scotland&#8217;s glass ceiling<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Gregor Townsend&#8217;s record against South Africa, New Zealand and Ireland now reads: played 18, lost 18.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>On the one hand, you could ask why Scotland, with their meagre resources, should expect to compete with the true Test heavyweights.<\/p>\n<p>But when you consider Argentina, a team of similar quality to Scotland, have managed home and away victories over New Zealand in recent times, we&#8217;re entitled to expect the occasional win over the big guns.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Belligerent Brown is a Test match animal<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Gregor Brown delivered a towering performance to underline he is a coming force in the international arena.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>He carried with a ferocity that set the tone for the forwards around him, with Jack Dempsey and Grant Gilchrist coming to the fore in that regard too.<\/p>\n<p>A hybrid of lock and flanker &#8211; or &#8216;flock&#8217; &#8211; his versatility is a huge asset, and on the evidence of Saturday&#8217;s showing against the All Blacks, Brown will take some shifting from this Scotland team.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762807043_687_\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scotland lacking &#8216;clutch&#8217; in the big moments Scott Robertson praised Damien McKenzie&#8217;s &#8220;clutch&#8221; plays that proved decisive as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5009],"tags":[748,4884,93212,712,18132,179183,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-562123","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-gregor-townsend","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-scott-robertson","13":"tag-the-all-blacks","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115527329105754857","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562123","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=562123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}