This was published 7 years ago
The motivating factor behind Tevita Kuridrani's match-winning try against Scotland
By Tom Decent
Edinburgh: When Michael Cheika glanced across at Tevita Kuridrani at half-time in the Wallabies' sheds at Murrayfield, he noticed he was doing something a little out of the ordinary.
"He was hitting himself in the head, which I told him wasn't advisable because it won't do him any good," Cheika said. "He was hurting because he missed one [tackle] early on and cost us a try."
Kuridrani made a meal of a simple one-on-one tackle on Scotland's Huw Jones who streaked away for his second try of the afternoon to put the hosts up 17-10 after 28 minutes once Greig Laidlaw had converted.
It left Kuridrani desperately wanting to redeem himself, something he most certainly did with a match-winning try in the 75th minute to lift Australia to their second win of the spring tour.
Error erased: Tevita Kuridrani scores the try to win the game for the Wallabies against Scotland.Credit: Ian MacNicol
"I was pretty determined to get to that line ... I had to," Kuridrani said. "In my mind I had to make up for the missed tackle ... so I really wanted to score that try. I was pretty down. It was a one-on-one and I missed it and I really wanted to make something to make up for it. Lucky I got the try.
"You try to forget it. If I keep thinking of it during the game, it might affect my game again so I just tried to move on to the next stuff. That was our plan, for me to run a short ball off Nard [Bernard Foley] and I didn't actually run the short ball ... I was lucky enough to get through."
Kuridrani, who also scored last week against Wales, received a ball from Foley about 20 metres out before slicing through two Scotland defenders.
He only had one man to beat and could have easily popped a pass to Israel Folau on his right but the fact he let in a soft try earlier might explain why he bulldozed over the top of fullback Stuart Hogg.
So how did Folau react, knowing he could have broken a nine-game try-scoring drought?
"He was very pissed off with me but we'll deal with it after," said Kuridrani with a smile. "I heard him calling for the ball but for me I just wanted to get the try and make up for what I did before that."
Cheika also joked that Kuridrani could have passed to Folau but backed his outside-centre's judgment and said he was doing a fine job replacing the void left by Samu Kerevi through injury.
"He cleaned it up, made something of it and then he probably could've given it to Israel just quietly," Cheika said. "He was in under the posts untouched, but he did it and that's what we want him to do. We want 'T' running hard at guys and I feel like he's started to come back into that form. He's got a big challenge from Samu Kerevi obviously and he was out of the team for a while. Now, while Samu's missing, he's got to try and claim as much ground as he can."
Two wins from two games has the Wallabies on a healthy trajectory, even if they know deep down they got out of jail in Edinburgh.
The question on everyone's minds is whether the Wallabies can actually complete the grand slam – wins against all four home unions – for the first time since 1984.
A lid will be put on hype for the time being though, with Kuridrani saying the Wallabies are not focused on history but rather the next game in front of them.
"For us as a group, we aren't really thinking about winning the grand slam," Kuridrani said. "For us it's just trying to take every game week by week. We've done this and we look forward to France next week and [will go] back to our review and preview and we're just trying to take it one game at a time."