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Scotland full-back Ollie Smith believes Finn Russell has been made an easy scapegoat after missing all three of his kicks at goal against England.
Russell’s failure to split the posts with his last kick of the game saw England hang on to claim a 16-15 victory and wrestle back the Calcutta Cup for the first time since 2020.
Smith, who was left out of the Scotland squad for the match, has since acknowledged that Russell should have made his missed kicks.
However, he fired back at those criticising the fly-half by suggesting that he has emerged as the scapegoat among self-appointed experts.
“The beautiful thing about playing professional sport is that people who are not necessarily well-studied on the game like to pick apart where the obvious errors are,” said Smith.
“I think Finn is very good at dealing with that and he’s very upfront. He should have got those kicks and he missed the kicks, so he can deal with that. I’m sure he’s absolutely fine. I understand the fans, they want us to win the game and they’re frustrated.”
Smith is no stranger to performance-related criticism, having taken himself off X (formerly Twitter) in response to being targeted by ‘fickle’ fans.
“If people are just calling you rubbish at rugby it’s a bit tough,” he added. “If people are nitpicking and there’s usually no substance to it, it’s just random fans, they would probably be quite nice to you if they saw you after a game.
“I’ve deleted Twitter. My account is still there but I don’t have the app because I just didn’t see it as being very beneficial. The mob is fickle sometimes, so I decided it’s best not to read that stuff.”
Russell, meanwhile, refused to shoulder the blame for Scotland’s defeat at Twickenham by describing it as a collective failure. He suggested that his team should have been out of sight by the end of the match after missing a number of opportunities.
Speaking on the Kick Offs and Kick Ons Podcast, Russell said: “Tough one to take that, wasn’t it? We played well but we didn’t take our chances and then I didn’t kick it at the end.
“You don’t want to blame the kicker. I think there were chances in the game where we could have scored and probably shouldn’t have been in that situation anyway.”
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