Duhan van der Merwe inflicted yet more pain on England on Saturday with a superb hat-trick of tries as Scotland came from behind to win 30-21 in the Six Nations at Murrayfield.
Scotland were 10-0 down early on but, inspired by their dashing wing, they bounced back with a third-round win that ended England’s bid for a Grand Slam.
Victory meant Scotland have won four Six Nations games in a row over England for the first time since the late 19th century, and not since 1972 had Scotland reeled off four straight wins over their oldest rivals.
Photo: Reuters
Scotland, in retaining the Calcutta Cup, rebounded from an agonizing loss to France and put themselves back in title contention with two wins from three games after they started with a 27-26 defeat of Wales in Cardiff. The 28-year-old Van der Merwe has now scored 26 tries in 37 Tests, leaving him one try short of Stuart Hogg’s all-time Scotland record.
Saturday’s treble also meant Van der Merwe has scored six tries in his past four games against England alone.
“I can’t believe it to be honest,” Van der Merwe told the BBC. “I have never scored a hat-trick against England, but I have to thank the boys for giving me the opportunity... I guess I am just the lucky one to finish them off.”
England coach Steve Borthwick praised a “very strong” Scotland performance, but also rued his new-look side’s mistakes.
“You saw some aspects of our game step forward today, but there were too many handling errors, and if you turn over that much ball it is very difficult to win a Test match against a quality Scotland team,” he said.
In Saturday’s other game, Ireland beat Wales 31-7 in a sometimes sloppy performance at Lansdowne Road. They now need two wins to secure unprecedented back-to-back Six Nations Grand Slams.
A late Tadhg Beirne try secured a bonus-point win for the hosts, whose 11th successive Six Nations victory equaled the record set by England between 2015-2017.
“Getting a bonus point at the end is always good. We were pretty ill-disciplined, we weren’t happy with how we performed today,” Ireland center Bundee Aki told Welsh broadcaster S4C.
“We knew we would be under the pump a number of times, we knew we had to stick to the process to weather the storm,” he added.
Ireland play England in a fortnight, while Wales will be looking for their first win in this year’s tournament at home to France.
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