Scotland 9 France 18

SCOTLAND coach Andy Robinson insisted poor defending cost his team in their opening Six Nations clash.

Mathieu Bastereaud crossed twice as the French won 18-9 at Murrayfield.

Chris Paterson slotted three kics for the Scots, but they had now answer to Bastareaud's power, while Morgan Parra added a conversion and two penalties.

Robinson admitted: "We conceded two soft scores and if we do that we're not going to beat anybody.

"It was hard against a good French scrum, the French were very canny in what they did."

But Robinson saw some reasons for optimism ahead of next week's trip to Cardiff to play Wales.

"There are a number of positives we've got to take out of that," he said.

"I was pleased with a number of performances, particularly Sean Lamont.

"The second half, the players performed better in defence and we had a number of attacking opportunities."

Lamont deflected Robinson's praise and admitted Scotland had not handled the presence of 18-stone Bastareaud well enough.

He said: "It doesn't matter how one person performs, it is a team game and we didn't come out firing as we expected we should have done.

"When you are two tries down, to regain that at international level is a difficult thing to do. We should never have conceded those two relatively soft tries.

"Bastareaud is certainly a big boy but you come against big guys the whole tournament. We should have dealt with him a bit better. It was down to our defence being too tight.

"We have a short turnaround. Recovery is the primary thing and we have to do our review, iron out a few things and get ourselves firing again."

Scotland head to Wales next week and they will have Lions prop Euan Murray available again, which will be vital in bolstering their scrum effort.

France number eight Imanol Harinordoquy, the man of the match, was delighted with his pack's effort.

He said: "I am very happy to win today. It is very hard to play against Scotland, they play right to the end.

"We knew today if we wanted to win we had to have a big performance in the forwards. I think we won the match in the scrum and in the fight."

France winger Vincent Clerc praised Bastareaud's performance on his return to the side after being hit with a three-month ban following his summer scandal.

Bastareaud had claimed he was attacked on a night out in order to cover up the fact he hurt himself in a drunken fall.

Clerc added: "It was a good performance after some problems in July. He did a great match with two tries and some great defence."

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