Scottish echoes of 1999 Six Nations title win as Antoine Dupont snubs his Murrayfield nemisis

This time they will be playing a meaningful role on Super Saturday as they go to Dublin with designs on glory.

A victory over Ireland in the first serving of a three-match feast will pile the pressure on France who host England in Paris in the final game of the day, which kicks off at 8.10pm UK time. The wait could be a tense one.

The weight of history is against Scotland but this feels like a season when anything is possible for Gregor Townsend’s side. The squad’s character was rightly questioned in the autumn when they collapsed against Argentina, blowing a 21-0 lead as they conceded five tries in the final 23 minutes.

There was much talk in the run-up to the Six Nations of learning from that loss, about the players taking ownership, being better under pressure and dealing with momentum swings.

It seemed to have a hollow ring to it when Italy defeated Scotland in the rain in Rome on the opening weekend of the championship but credit where it’s due, this team have responded magnificently since, beating England, Wales and, quite spectacularly, France on Saturday in a run of victories that has seen them rack up 107 points and 15 tries.

Scotland led 47-14 at one point before eventually winning 50-40 after a late French rally. It was a remarkable game which produced 13 tries, three yellow cards and, in the final analysis, one of the great Scottish victories.

When they last won three in a row in the Six Nations it was during the Covid-interrupted campaign of 2020. However, they had lost their opening two games and ended up fourth in the final standings behind England, France and Ireland.

Now they find themselves with the chance of a first title since 1999 when Townsend himself was the star turn in a team of talents that included Alan Tait, Gary Armstrong and Kenny Logan.

There were echoes of ’99 in the way Scotland ran amok in Saturday’s stunning win, particularly during the third quarter when they seemed to score at will. Twenty-seven years ago they went to the Stade de France and scored five tries in the opening 25 minutes en route to a 36-22 victory, their previous biggest points haul in a fixture that has been played for 116 years.

The Five Nations title triumph of 1999 was only made possible the day after the win in Paris when Wales beat England at Wembley in the final game of the championship to end the hopes of Scotland’s closest challengers.

Townsend’s side will need a favour again if they are to be crowned champions, but this time from England. Both France and Scotland are tied at the top of the table on 16 points, with third-placed Ireland on 14. Only these three can win the title but it is France who remain in the box seat thanks to their superior points difference which at +79 is 58 points better than Scotland’s and 63 better than Ireland’s.

So Scotland will find themselves in the unusual position of cheering on the English in Paris - provided they can overcome Ireland which in itself is a huge task.

They remain the one team in the Six Nations that Townsend has failed to get the better off during his time as head coach. Scotland have lost 11 in a row to Ireland under his watch, a run that includes two defeats in the World Cup and eight in the Six Nations.

Saturday’s match will also be a straight shootout for the Triple Crown but it's the title that Scotland want. You have to go back to 2017 for the last Scottish victory over the Irish, when Vern Cotter’s side prevailed 27-22 at Murrayfield. Scotland haven’t won in Dublin since 2010 when the game was staged at Croke Park. The last triumph at Lansdowne Road, the Aviva’s previous incarnation, was in the last millennium.

These long-standing records need to be consigned to the dustbin of history and it feels as if this squad is capable of doing so. The team played beautifully on Saturday, with Kyle Steyn arguably the best of an impressive bunch. He scored two tries, as did fellow winger Darcy Graham, while Pierre Schoeman, Ben White and Tom Jordan chipped in with one apiece.

If the backs revelled in most of the try-scoring glory it was the forwards who gave them the platform, a point not lost on Sione Tuipulotu. “I really want to credit our pack,” said the Scotland captain. “They got to the breakdown over and over and over again. They carried well, we won our set-piece.”

Edinburgh was at its spring best for the match, bathed in sunshine to welcome the hordes of French supporters. An estimated 15,000 made the journey but it felt like more such was their ubiquity on the city’s streets, cafes and bars across the weekend.

It was a glorious occasion, a 13-try epic, but there was edge to the game, too. Oscar Jegou, the France flanker, appeared to gouge the eye of Scotland hooker Ewan Ashman in the second half, an incident seemingly missed by both match referee Angus Gardner and the TMO. Retrospective action will surely follow.

Antoine Dupont, who endured as torrid an afternoon as one can remember, snubbed an offer from Ben White to shake hands as the French team were clapped off at the end. The two scrum-halves had clashed during the game when White celebrated Kyle Steyn’s intercept try in the Toulouse man’s face.

Both nines scored tries but it was the Scotland man who came out on top in that particular battle, a real feather in the cap for White against a player widely seen as the best in the world.

Fabien Galthie was magnanimous enough in the aftermath but this was a bad weekend for the France coach. It began with him voicing complaints about Murrayfield’s away-team facilities - “the smallest changing room in the world,” he said - and ended with his Grand Slam dreams in the bin.

France are still favourites to win the title but Scotland are pushing them all the way, and who saw that coming after they were almost washed away in Rome?

Scorers: Scotland: Tries: Graham 2, Steyn 2, Schoeman, White, Jordan. Cons: Russell 6. Pen: Russell.

France: Tries: Bielle-Biarrey, Attissogbe, Dupont, Jegou, Ramos 2. Cons: Ramos 5.

Yellow cards: Jalibert (Fra, 32min), Nouchi (Fra, 59min); Bayliss (Sco, 78min).

Scotland: B Kinghorn; D Graham, H Jones (T Jordan 56), S Tuipulotu, K Steyn (F Douglas 66); F Russell, B White (G Horne 64); P Schoeman (R Sutherland 64), G Turner (E Ashman 52), D Rae (Z Fagerson 39), G Brown (G Gilchrist 32), S Cummings (J Bayliss 52), M Fagerson, R Darge, J Dempsey.

France: T Ramos; T Attissogbe, N Depoortere (P-L Barassi 48), Y Moefana, L Bielle-Biarrey; M Jalibert, A Dupont (B Serin 69); J-B Gros (R Neti 52), J Marchand (16 Peato Mauvaka 46), D Aldegheri (D Bamba), C Ollivon (T Flament 46), M Guillard (E Meafou 46), F Cros, O Jegou, A Jelonch (L Nouchi 42).

Referee: Angus Gardner (RA).

Attendance: 67,144.