“There’s three competitions over the next 12 months; we’ve got the Nations Championship the next four weeks, then Six Nations and obviously the World Cup,” Russell said overnight.
“I think that’s amazing to have the opportunity three times to potentially win something. Since I’ve been with Scotland, we’ve never won anything, in terms of tournaments … We’ve put ourselves in a good position for the Nations Championship just now [second in the Northern Hemisphere table] with three tough games before the finals weekend [at Twickenham at the end of November].
Scottish playmaker Finn Russell (inset) accepts the time for “heroic defeats” has passed. Photos / Photosport
Russell was encouraged by Scotland’s performance in a 42-28 loss away to world champions South Africa in July, but accepts the time for “heroic defeats” has passed.
“We had some good performances in the summer, and we just need to kick on from there and try and beat the top teams rather than running them close and losing,” he said.
“We had a big win away from home against Argentina, then travelled to South Africa and ran them close.
“It was great to have a good performance, but that was a game that we had enough chances where we definitely should have won that.”
Russell, capped 95 times by Scotland, added: “We can’t go off a big win against France to then losing to Ireland, like we did in the Six Nations.
“We need to be stacking these wins one on top of the next. And in the summer we didn’t manage to do that after Argentina. We need to be winning these games back-to-back to challenge to win tournaments.”
– AFP