mens
nations-championship
Scotland Captain Sione Tuipulotu feels the team that can stay “tougher longer” will emerge victorious when New Zealand visit Murrayfield.
Scotland looked like they could claim their first win over the team All black people last year after fighting back from 17-0 to level, only to lose it in a late effort.
Gregor Townsend’s team have been beating them ever since England and France in Edinburgh and Tuipulotu believes that they have progressed.
“We’ve been through a lot in the last 12 months, as a coaching staff, as a playing group and as a team together,” Glasgow said the center.
“We’ve had to support each other, we’ve gone through some losses where we’ve had to pick each other up, and we’ve also been there with some significant wins.
“I feel like we’ve improved a lot in the last 12 months and the experiences have allowed us to improve, playing in Pretoria against the world champions, having those experiences that we haven’t been exposed to as a team, at least while I’ve been playing for Scotland.
“We learned a lot from playing the All Blacks last time, and to get to that last 15 minutes and have the game in the balance. They got a yellow card then to really have some momentum.
“We learned a lot about finishing games and we carry a lot of disappointment from that game just because we came back from 17 points down and really got the momentum back to the point where it was pretty overwhelming.
“It gives us confidence that we can create a game that can overpower the All Blacks at times, but obviously we didn’t do enough and hopefully the experiences we’ve had against other top teams over the last 12 months in the last 15 minutes stand us in good stead.”
New Zealand scored 93 points in two wins Australia last month, after being second best in the series against South Africa.
“I think we play in a similar style,” said the Australian-born Tuipulotu. “We want to keep the ball and get deep and challenge the defence. That’s definitely how the All Blacks played.
“I think the one who will be stronger for longer will basically win.
“I’m sure they fully understand the fact that we will have our moments in this game and we fully understand that they will probably have their moments as well.
“I think it will just be a team that can be more solid for longer after 80 minutes and ride those momentum waves that we saw 12 months ago.
“It’s an exciting challenge because we know they’ve had some experience of it in the last three months, but hopefully we can present a slightly different challenge with the ball.”