'Super special' for Sione as Tuipulotu leads Scotland to victory over Australia with Gran in the stands
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Many people would not have predicted one of the Scotland player’s grandmothers become a celebrity in Rugby circles ahead of this November’s Autumn Nations Test Series.
That has been the case for Jaqueline Thomson though as the Greenock native was flown in from Australia to surprise captain Sione Tuipulotu and brother Mosese. The emotional video captured the hearts of the Murrayfield faithful and things were even more heart warming when Tuipulotu was presented with the Hopetoun Cup by his granny after their 27-13 win over the Wallabies.
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Hide Ad“It was super special,” the Scotland skipper said who scored the opening try of the match. “I don't really score many tries, to be honest. Not for Glasgow, not for Scotland. But that one was pretty special to score while my grand was here and knowing how much she also wanted to beat Australia.”
Asked what his Grand said to him when presenting him with the trophy, Tuiplotu said: “She whispered in my ear and said, we got them. She lives with my dad at our family home back home. So my dad will pick her up from the airport. She’ll be safe!
“It does feel weird (seeing the Murrayfield crowd cheer for her) but I feel really blessed because of this all happening. And not just for me. Before the match, I was a little bit emotional about the fact that her life's just gone full circle. That she's back here watching me play for Scotland and watching me captain Scotland. I
“I'm just happy that she gets to have that moment. She moved over to Australia as a young girl and raised my mum with limited stuff. And now she gets to enjoy this, gets to sit in the stand and get some recognition. It makes me so happy.”
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Hide AdThe victory over the Wallabies ends Scotland’s Autumn Nations Series and 2024 on a massive high. It was an all round top performance from the Scots but the skipper still felt their were improvements that could be made.
He said: “Throughout the week, we were pretty confident that we were a better team than this Wallaby team. I'm not too sure if it's an upset or something like that or how the media views it, but we were very confident that we were going to be the better team. It's a good win, but I don't think it's the best win or anything. We're looking forward to the Six Nations now.
“We definitely didn’t expect them to beat them easily, but we didn't really feel like they had played a defensive team like us and we also didn't feel like they had played an attacking team like us. We were very confident during the week.
“We knew we had to prepare well, obviously. We knew they were going to come in with confidence as well, but we knew once we got into the game that we could make them feel pretty uncomfortable with our defence especially.
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Hide Ad“We’re really happy with that win. But I think the scary thing for this group is that's probably just a six or seven out of ten performance against a pretty good team. We’re the only ones on the training ground. We're the only ones who see what we can pull off.
“It's just about cleaning up the few errors that we had in that game. I actually think that scoreline could have been a lot bigger. We made a lot of errors on our set-piece and stuff like that when we were clean through.
“If we can clean up those things and maybe be a bit more ruthless with our set-piece in the finish zone…we had a couple of lineouts that we lost there. We’re a pretty dangerous team.”
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