Brown hails battling Scots

Kelly Brown admitted Scotland were not up to scratch in the first half against Ireland but hailed their fighting qualities after a fine win.

The Dark Blues were forced to cling on as the Irish claimed 78 per cent of the first-half possession and 80 per cent of the pitch territory.

But despite being so far in front in the statistics, they added just three points to the scoreboard as some desperate Scotland defending held their various surges at bay.

Ireland did manage Craig Gilroy's try three minutes after the restart but they were left stunned as a resurgent Scotland battled back up the pitch to score four match-winning penalties off of the boot of Greig Laidlaw to secure a 12-8 triumph, their first RBS 6 Nations success over Ireland at Murrayfield in 12 years.

The scrum-half was the hero but captain Brown insisted it was the team's collective determination not to be overrun which really set up the victory.

He said: "If I'm being fair to Ireland, they put us under quite a lot of pressure.

"But some of our defence wasn't up to the standard we needed. We sat down at half-time and spoke about that.

"We need to get our spacing right and we need to get off the line. While our skills weren't absolutely spot on, our work and fight and guts were very, very good. For that reason I'm very proud of the boys.

"We're a side that will always fight and scrap and if a team is going to get anything of us, we are going to make them work very, very hard for it.

"That's exactly what we did, although, if I'm being honest we got a little bit of luck as well."

Brown played as crucial a part as any of his team-mates as he cajoled a side under the cosh into a winning position.

But, with an eye on the stats that showed even at full-time, the Scots had managed just 29 per cent of the possession and were forced into 128 tackles just to keep the Irish at bay, he also was under no illusions about their standard of performance.

"We are really happy to get the win but we know we have to improve," he said. "Because if we play like that in two weeks' time against Wales, then we will not win that game."

The Scots had gone into the game looking to rid themselves of another niggling problem having not managed back-to-back wins in the same 12 years since they had last toppled the Irish.

With that hoodoo also now broken following their earlier win over Italy, interim head coach Scott Johnson believes his side have positioned themselves well for a title shoot-out.

The coach - whose side remains joint-top try scorers with Wales - said: "I think we are in it, yeah. There's no doubt we can compete. We have shown that once we get things right, we can hurt sides with the ball.

"But unfortunately in the first three games we have lost possession and we have lost territory. We have got to get a combination of both back into our game.

"If we get that right we have shown we can score tries against quality sides and we have shown we can defend like hell."