Lomu treats Murrayfield crowd to awesome display

By RICHARD BATH

EDINBURGH - Less than two years ago at Murrayfield, the wing Cammie Murray had the audacity to jink and swerve his way past Jonah Lomu as Scotland bowed out of the World Cup at the hands of the All Blacks.

The gargantuan Kiwi may charge like a wounded rhino, but his memory is obviously of elephantine proportions.

This morning he exacted a truly savage revenge as the Barbarians beat Scotland by a record margin.

Not since Tony Underwood flapped and faffed at Lomu in Cape Town in 1995 has any international winger been as cruelly exposed as Murray was last night.

It was not just the fact that Lomu scored four tries in the first half that made the scenario so utterly cringeworthy, but the contemptuous way he brushed off Murray and fullback Chris Paterson as well.

With the Barbarians scoring three tries during the first 10 minutes and the outcome of the game never in question, matters came to such a ridiculous pass that when, shortly into the second half, Murray balked at the sight of Lomu, trying to chip over the man mountain from point blank range, the crowd broke out in ironic applause.

Scotland had hoped to use the game as a serious attempt to rebuild after a disastrous year, but all they proved against the Barbarian side comprising mainly of has-beens and players on an off-season jolly was that their familiar failings persist.

Scotland still suffer from a chronic lack of strength and depth and a piteously poor back three which lacks the power and pace to deal with the likes of Lomu, the Bulls' wing Friedrich Lombard and Leicester's Irish full-back Geordan Murphy.

Only in the all-round play of Marcus Di Rollo and the two tries he created, one of which was finished off by No 8 John Petrie, was there even the slightest suggestion of a silver lining.

To set against that nugget was a powerful shortfall in skills, imagination and, most of all, effectiveness in the tackling department.

It was perhaps fitting that it was the Samoan Pat Lam, last week appointed an SRU role model, who touched down for the Barbarians' 12th try, the one that would have made this a record home defeat had it been a capped international.

Barbarians 74 (Lomu 4, Lombard 3, Maggs, van der Westhuizen, Cockerill, Clarke, Lam tries; Van Straaten con, Montgomery 6 con)

Scotland 31 (Paterson, Di Rollo, McLaren, Petrie, MacFadyen tries, Hodge 3 con)

Halftime: 26-41.

- INDEPENDENT