MY ACCOUNT
Wales hooker Ryan Elias hailed his side’s “never-say-die attitude” in their tense 20-17 victory over Scotland at the Principality Stadium on Saturday.
After suffering a heavy loss to Ireland last weekend, Wales gave their Six Nations title defence lift-off thanks to the kicking expertise of Dan Biggar.
The fly-half kicked 15 points on what was his 100th Test outing, including a drop-goal 11 minutes from time to seal the victory for Wales in Cardiff.
Scotland were a man down at that point after Finn Russell, who himself kicked 12 points, was yellow carded for a deliberate knock-on.
Wales trailed by five points in the first half and were again behind approaching the hour mark, but they rallied to avoid successive losses to begin a campaign for the first time since 2007.
“It’s huge,” Elias told BBC Sport. “We needed a big reaction from last week, especially for the crowd here today.
“We didn’t turn up last week physically or in a lot of aspects of the game. I don’t think we fired any shots last week.
“We had a long hard look at ourselves in the week. We were physical, we had that never-say-die attitude. Hopefully we can just keep building on that now.”
Russell’s yellow card was his fourth in Test rugby, each of those coming in the Six Nations – including one in a defeat to Wales seven years ago.
Biggar took full advantage by kicking for the three points soon after, rather than playing the ball out wide as Wales closed in on the try-line.
After expertly seeing out the win, however, centurion Biggar was left to reflect on a memorable day.
“This is one of my best victories in a Welsh shirt,” he said. “It’s been a really difficult week. We’ve had to put up with a lot of flak – and rightly so.
“To come back here and put on a show like that, to grind a result out like that, is one of the best victories in my 100 games.
“We put in a huge shift defensively, our forwards fronted up, and it laid a really strong foundation.
“Off the back of the week we’ve had, this team has shown if anything it’s resilient and can hit back after a poor performance.”
Scotland beat England 20-17 in last week’s Calcutta Cup clash and started strongly through a Darcy Graham try in Cardiff.
But after failing to push on, they have now lost 10 of their 12 away matches against Wales in the Six Nations, including the last nine in a row at the Principality Stadium.
And Scotland skipper Stuart Hogg was left to reflect on an ill-disciplined display from his side in the Welsh capital.
“We’re bitterly disappointed,” he told BBC Sport. “The stuff that we’re in control of, when we’re on the front foot, we’re really dangerous. At times, we weren’t allowed to do that.
“We’re a lot better than what we showed. That’s international rugby – you have to take your chances or you end up on the wrong side of the scoreline.
“[Poor discipline] was absolutely a factor. One penalty or knock-on is fine, but when we compound error upon error that’s frustrating, because we know we’re better than that.
“Credit to Wales, they were fairly good at times. It’s a horrible feeling right now but that is Test match rugby.”
