Cairns On Scotland ‘A’ Grade Result

Ben Cairns praised the atmosphere generated by the crowd at Netherdale during the 38-7 win over Tonga and believes the Scotland ‘A’ players showcased their merits for selection for senior honours ahead of next week’s Bank of Scotland Corporate Autumn Test against Argentina at Murrayfield (28 November).Cairns produced an impressive display in front of a 3, 976 crowd and scored one of the five tries that blew away the Pacific Islanders and the Edinburgh centre highlighted the buzz created by the home crowd.Cairns said: “It was a really good atmosphere and the anthems before the game were really good. “It was brilliant to see so many kids waiting for autographs after the game as well – it was a fantastic night.”After scoring an early try through man-of-the-match Greig Laidlaw – in as a late replacement for Rory Lawson – Scotland ‘A’ produced an accomplished attacking display and Cairns believes several players gave national head coach Andy Robinson a timely reminder of their credentials.He added: “Our aim as a team was to put ourselves forward for selection for the senior side; that is what the ‘A’ games are all about.”Quite a lot of the boys did that tonight and we will have to wait and see what happens next week.”We are all really happy with the performance. We didn’t really all come together as a squad until Wednesday, so we only did two sessions – one practice and then a team run – and both went really well and we were ready for the challenge.”A lot of the hard work was done in the first half and, although it was only 14-0 at the interval, we knew the game would open up in the second half.”To be fair, we perhaps should have been more clinical and there were quite a few breaks that we didn’t finish off.”