Hamish Watson believes Scotland have momentum heading into their crunch Guinness Six Nations contest with Wales next week after comfortably beating Georgia 48-7 in a warm-up game at BT Murrayfield.
Back-rower Watson produced a man-of-the-match performance and was one of three try scorers in the first half, along with Darcy Graham and first-time skipper Fraser Brown, as the Scots led 17-0 at the break.
Akaki Tabutsadze got a try that the committed Georgian performance deserved just after half-time as he caught scrum-half Vasil Lobzhanidze’s lofted pass and sprinted over, but Scotland then pulled away and finished strongly.
Second tries for Brown and Graham, in addition to scores from Stuart McInally, debutant Duhan van der Merwe and Blair Kinghorn pushed Gregor Townsend’s men close to the 50-point barrier.
Yet Watson claims there’s even more to come as they gear up for their Championship finale against Wales in Llanelli.
“It wasn’t perfect out there. We knew it would be tough to break down Georgia because they’ve got a good set-piece,” explained Watson. “We actually did pretty well to score three or four tries from our maul.
“I thought our scrum went really well – we’re really pleased with that but we butchered a few try-scoring chances, myself included, so it wasn’t perfect.
“We haven’t been together for a while but clicked from the off after two weeks of training. That’s really promising for our big game against Wales next week.
“Momentum is a massive thing and that will really help us. It will be a different test against Wales but they’ve got a game tomorrow [against France], so we’ll watch that and get ready for next week.”
Scotland’s attention now turns to that Round 5 clash with Wales on Super Saturday and depending on the Ireland v Italy result this weekend, they may still be in the hunt to lift the Guinness Six Nations title for the first time this century.
Even if not, they will want to end the Championship on a high and there were certainly positive signs against Georgia in what was their first game together since beating France 28-17 in Round 4 back on March 8.
“There’s a lot to work on but we started where we left off against France which was really promising,” added Watson.
“It was a convincing win in the end and shows our fitness is there despite not being together for seven or eight months.”
