Tandy’s response to heavy opening defeats against England and France, in which Wales conceded 15 tries and 102 points, was to make four changes.<\/p>\n
Uncapped Leicester wing Gabriel Hamer-Webb, Scarlets fly-half Sam Costelow , Dragons second-row Ben Carter and Scarlets flanker Taine Plumtree coming in for Ellis Mee, Dan Edwards, Adam Beard and Olly Cracknell.<\/p>\n
Wales made shocking starts in the opening two games but ensured that was not the case on this occasion.<\/p>\n
Plumtree and Hamer-Webb both picked up injuries in the opening two minutes. Hamer-Webb was forced off briefly with a bloody nose before Plumtree was permanently replaced by James Botham because of a shoulder problem.<\/p>\n
Wales’ discipline was again poor in the opening exchanges with two soft penalties, before Joe Hawkins was sent to the bunker for a high tackle on Scotland flanker Gregor Brown, who had moved from lock to the back row from the victory over England to replace the injured Jamie Ritchie.<\/p>\n
Wing Josh Adams made a couple of important early interventions with a crucial tackle on Scotland centre Huw Jones followed by a vital interception.<\/p>\n
Wales rallied with 14 men and after a searing break from scrum-half Tomos Williams, the home side produced an identical successful tap penalty move to last week when Carre dived over after the initial drive from Lake.<\/p>\n
Hawkins’ card remained yellow as it was deemed a passive tackle but it was still an 11th sin-binning in Tandy’s seven games in charge.<\/p>\n
Scotland took advantage of the extra back with a sweeping move that was finished by Steyn.<\/p>\n
Hawkins returned and his fellow Scarlets centre Eddie James, along with Lake, Carre and flanker Alex Mann, laid the foundations for Adams to cross for his 24th Wales try.<\/p>\n
Costelow, who was starting his first game since July 2025 with Edwards having played the past seven games, converted from the touchline.<\/p>\n
Botham was outstanding after his early introduction and a turnover laid the foundations for a Costelow penalty.<\/p>\n
Scotland made a couple of early tactical substitutions as prop Pierre Schoeman and back rower Josh Bayliss came on for Nathan McBeth and Max Williamson, with Brown reverting to lock.<\/p>\n
After another storming Steyn break, a vital Mann turnover forced a penalty as Wales led 17-5 at half-time, the first time the home side had led under Tandy at the interval.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tandy’s response to heavy opening defeats against England and France, in which Wales conceded 15 tries and 102…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-310406","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}