Ex-Howe of Fife pair George Horne and Matt Fagerson unable to help Scottish national rugby team break 121-year-old duck v New Zealand
Former Howe of Fife pair George Horne and Matt Fagerson were unable to help the Scottish national rugby team break their 121-year-old duck against New Zealand on Saturday.
Their latest defeat, by 43-21 at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium at the weekend, was their 22nd on the bounce and 32nd all together, extending their wait for a first win against the All Blacks to 34 fixtures since 1905, the closest they’ve got being two draws, with scorelines of 0-0 in 1964 and 25-25 in 1983, both at Murrayfield.
Adding insult to injury, the 22-point losing margin inflicted on them in Saturday’s Nations Championship fixture was the biggest they’ve been hit by since a 51-22 thumping at Murrayfield back in November 2012, with Andy Robinson as head coach and current New Zealand attack coach Mike Blair at scrum-half, having not been beaten by more then eight points in the interim.
Fagerson, 28, was named in head coach Gregor Townsend’s starting line-up at blindside flanker, making way for Josh Bayliss on 62 minutes, the same time that his Glasgow Warriors teammate Horne, 31, was brought off the bench to replace Ben White at scrum-half.
Those appearances take Fagerson to 67 caps, 51 of them starts, and Horne to 48, 40 as a replacement.
Fellow former Howe player Jamie Ritchie was named in Townsend’s initial autumn test squad but forced to drop out after sustaining a knee injury playing for Warriors during their 29-20 win at home to South Africa’s Lions at the end of last month.
Looking back over that latest loss, Townsend, 53, said: “I have high expectations of the team and they have high expectations of each other and we didn’t deliver them.”
The Scots’ second game of the current international break is this coming Sunday hosting Australia, with kick-off at 3.10pm.
Townsend is due to announce his squad to play the Australians this Friday and they’ll go into that game targeting a fifth win in six meetings.
They’ve only lost one of their last handful of matches against the Wallabies, by 16-15 at Murrayfield in October 2022, with the others going their way by 27-13 in November 2024, 15-13 three years prior and 53-24 in November 2017, all at Murrayfield too, and 24-19 away in Sydney in June 2017.