Scotland boss Townsend praises Portugal for tough test and says players 'put hands up' for Australia match

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Scotland beat Portugal 59-21 at Murrayfield in their third match of the Autumn Nations Test Series.

Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend says he was pleased that Portugal were able to provide them with a tough test ahead of their final Autumn clash against Australia next weekend.

The home side ran out 59-21 winners at Murrayfield in a match they controlled and were comfortable in but were certainly made to work hard for their points. It has given Townsend plenty to think about in terms of selection ahead of their final fixture against the Wallabies.

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Speaking after the win, he said: “I thought Portugal really tested us at times. When you play such an ambitious attacking game you might make errors and I felt like our defence got rewards at times in getting the ball back. But also if you're attacking so much - and I thought they were accurate with their attack - you're going to cause the defence problems. They did that more in the second half, so credit to them for that.

“They brought a lot of physicality and line speed that we had to just adjust and find solutions and the players did that. I thought the first half was probably more clinical at times once we got through a sticky five, ten minutes. The second half with the changes we were making and the fact we didn't have as much possession maybe it wasn't as fluent but it was a good performance and a very good win against a Test team.”

Townsend said they wouldn’t be just looking at performances in this match ahead of the next game but also how the players front up in training. However, there are certainly a few today who gave him food for thought.

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“We don't just look at the performance today,” said Townsend. “We also look at what they've been doing in training. There is a lot of competition in our squad. We do have a settled team too and that team has been performing well. So the competition is good. It might not necessarily transfer to many changes next week but we'll certainly look at every position, every position on the bench as well and look at how the players have performed today and this week in training.”

One player who will certainly be in contention is Player of the Match Tom Jordan. It was another fine performance at full back for Bristol bound back after also impressing against South Africa.

“Having Kyle and Darcy back available for this game meant we had more options this week than we did going into South Africa,” said Townsend. “Tom’s now played two and a half games at full-back so he's really in the mix at full-back and Arron Reed was excellent today. His point of difference is his speed and he's shown that this year for Sale. He had two very good games back-to-back.

“He had one really good hustle back. I think the ball ended up going in touch but he'd shown his pace there to cover any threat on the kick-through. So yeah, it's a good position to be in right now and obviously we’re missing Kyle Steyn. Those other guys have played well to make it a harder selection for this weekend. How happy were you with the tries across the board? Yeah, I think just tries in general.

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“At times the wingers get the tries on the back of the work of the forwards I think Arron Reid's try was on a really good maul. There was variety in how we played. Maybe in the first half we went to the width as our first option but the second half we were carrying more and more direct and that was opening up space. One of the tries, I think Jamie Dobie's, came from being direct. That's the players thinking on their feet as to what's going to work for this moment against the defence.”

The Scotland coach also said he was very happy with the strength in depth, not just in the back three, but across the squad as a whole saying: “I think it's definitely the most strength in depth we've had across the board. We've now made 14 changes, it would have been 15 changes if Harry Paterson had been fit and I'm sure Harry would have gone well today. 

“We were selecting players that hadn't played for us before, hadn't played many games and they performed well. So I think our depth is better than I've ever seen it. We're going to put two teams out next week to play two Test matches, Chile and Australia and we feel confident with those two games with who's going to be out there to play for Scotland. In terms of back three, maybe I'd have to think back to other times but certainly across the board we've got more depth.”

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