Breakdown - Silky Scots and Sneaky Sean Slice open Italy

Scotland have surprised people this championship – their critics, their fans and probably even themselves.  They’ve played with a good amount of inventiveness and ambition when they’ve had the chance, and nothing summed this up more than Matt Scott’s try against Italy at the weekend.  It was a perfectly executed first phase move, so let’s see what forces were at work in releasing Scott into space for arguably their best-worked try of the season so far.

 

Scotland lined up behind a lineout with outside centre Sean Lamont (white 13) almost directly in front of inside centre Matt Scott (white 12).  By the time fly half Ruaridh Jackson (white 10) gets the ball, right wing Sean Maitland (white 14) has also appeared behind Jackson on his left hand shoulder.  The Italians have rightly spotted the move as a simple ‘slice’ (with 13 cutting in and 12 drifting out).  They have lined up with Andrea Masi (blue 15) marking Jackson and ready to hit Lamont on the cut back, Gonzalo Canale (blue 12) is ready to drift right and hit Maitland, whilst Tommaso Benvenuti (blue 13) is wider, waiting to cut down Scott should he receive the ball.

 

As the move triggers, Lamont angles his run directly into Canale, who would be wanting to push forward and across to hit Maitland.  As it turns out, his route is blocked and when Maitland does receive the ball, it means that Benvenuti, instead of just having to simply mark Scott, is now faced with a 2 on 1, with no cover from Canale.

 

Benvenuti unfortunately does the worst thing possible and dithers.  He stays stranded, hitting neither Scott nor Maitland, meaning that when Maitland makes his half break (before being caught by the cover) he can offload to Scott who has been allowed a free run on his shoulder.  Scott, the try scorer, and Maitland, the offloader, got the credit for this, but the real work was done by Sean Lamont in blocking Canale’s drift.  Very sneaky, very effective.