Wow!

I posted – back in February – a really quite excited missive celebrating a Scottish Rugby triumph over the auld enemy on the opening weekend of this year’s Six Nations tournament – at Twickenham! Those who don’t follow such things may not be aware quite how big of a deal this was. The Scots won consecutive victories at the Home of Rugby for the first time in a very long time.

Subsequent to that post – in which I also looked ahead hopefully to at least two more wins in the competition – I kept fairly quiet, so as not to jinx the team. Well – the tournament finished last weekend and I need keep silent no longer.

As predicted, the Scots were unable to beat either the French or the Irish (currently numbers one and two in the world) – the latter completing a fine Grand Slam in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day (many congratulations!). The Scots did, however, win their other two games, finishing with three bonus point victories and third place in the tournament.

Even more impressive is what those results have done to the current world rankings (see below) – a matter of considerable import in a Rugby World Cup year.

Let it be said at once that Scotland are in a fierce group in the World Cup. They will have to face to both the Irish (again) and the South Africans in the group stages and they would need to beat at least one of them to stand a chance of progressing to the later stages of the tournament. This is extremely unlikely – but we Scots are by nature infeasibly optimistic, so who knows?

…and, of course, nothing will stop us celebrating in the meantime.