{"id":113726,"date":"2025-11-02T08:03:47","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T08:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/113726\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T08:03:47","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T08:03:47","slug":"gregor-townsends-four-word-response-to-scotland-facing-all-blacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/113726\/","title":{"rendered":"Gregor Townsend’s four word response to Scotland facing All Blacks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gregor Townsend admitted he \u201ccan\u2019t wait\u201d for another crack at New Zealand<\/a> next weekend after his Scotland<\/a> side kicked off their autumn series with an emphatic 85-0 victory over the United States.<\/p>\n

The Scots ran in 13 tries \u2013 seven in the first half and six after the break \u2013 to rack up their biggest-ever victory at Murrayfield.<\/p>\n

Duhan van der Merwe scored a double on his 50th cap, while Darcy Graham<\/a> grabbed a hat-trick to move level with his Edinburgh<\/a> colleague at the top of Scotland\u2019s all-time scoring charts on 34 tries.<\/p>\n

Jamie Dobie also notched a treble, while Dylan Richardson<\/a>, George Horne<\/a>, Stafford McDowall<\/a>, Kyle Rowe<\/a> and Ollie Smith<\/a> went over the line as the Scots limbered up for the All Blacks<\/a> by swatting their American visitors aside.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously we had more ball than we probably would get normally against a top 10 team,\u201d said head coach Townsend.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

22m Entries <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought the effort was outstanding. Of course next week will be a different opposition, one of the top teams in the world, but what we worked on in training, we got that out on the pitch so it\u2019s a good start to the campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody\u2019s aware of the step up next week. We obviously know New Zealand are going to test us in different ways than the USA<\/a> weren\u2019t able to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scotland have never beaten the All Blacks but they ran them close in each of their previous two meetings under Townsend in 2017 and 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t wait, actually,\u201d said Townsend of next Saturday\u2019s match. \u201cWe don\u2019t get to play them that often and we\u2019ve only played them twice in my time and they were both great occasions, very good games.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know we have to be close to our best to win, but that\u2019s what we\u2019ll be working on in training this week. I did feel that in terms of how the squad prepared, even in the pouring rain on Wednesday, you could tell that there\u2019s an edge, that there\u2019s more leadership coming out from our players.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe players are driving a lot of what we\u2019re doing in training, so that\u2019ll have to happen next week and we\u2019ll have to have the players driving our performance in those 80 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Townsend also revealed that he expects Glasgow<\/a> forwards Zander Fagerson<\/a> and Rory Darge<\/a> and Northampton<\/a> prop Elliot Millar Mills to be fit after their recent injury issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cZander trained last week, he did all that was asked of him,\u201d said Townsend. \u201cHe did live rugby on Wednesday and he was a big part of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cRory had a really good session on Friday and I was watching him closely, so I think he\u2019s going to be passed to train fully next week. And Elliot Millar Mills looks like he\u2019ll be passed fit to train next week too, so I\u2019m hoping that we have a full squad to select from when we do it on Sunday or Monday night.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gregor Townsend admitted he \u201ccan\u2019t wait\u201d for another crack at New Zealand next weekend after his Scotland side…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-113726","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}