The Japan Times - Scotland edge Wales in Six Nations thriller to end Cardiff curse

The visitors were 27-0 up early in the second half only for the home side to score 26 unanswered points of their own.

Their nail-biting win meant Scotland ended a run of 11 straight defeats in the Welsh capital, a sequence including nine Six Nations losses.

Scotland were in command after Duhan van der Merwe went over for the second of his two tries -- and his side's third in all after prop Pierre Schoeman crossed in the first half

But a new-look Wales, aided by a couple of Scotland yellow cards, then hit back with four tries as James Botham, grandson of England cricket great Ian Botham, Rio Dyer, impressive No 8 Aaron Wainwright and replacement Alex Mann all crossed to the delight of a raucous home crowd.

Scotland, for whom captain Finn Russell kicked three conversions and two penalties, were now clinging on to a one-point lead heading into the final 10 minutes.

But they regained their composure sufficiently to end the match by laying siege to the Wales line, with Van der Merwe being denied a hat-trick by the television match official.

"It's brilliant to win down here after not winning in Cardiff for 22 years but we will be a bit disappointed with that second-half performance," Russell told S4C.

"The second-half discipline wasn't good enough, two yellow cards allowed Wales back into the game."

Scotland next face France at Murrayfield, with fly-half Russell adding: "There is a lot of things to work on which is probably a good place to be getting a win first up down here."

Wales back-row Wainwright was left thinking of what might have been, telling the BBC: "We probably wanted the game to go on another five minutes.

"We left ourselves too much to do, and were probably not accurate enough in the first half. A lot of their ball came from our errors.

"As the scoreboard kept ticking down the belief grew, but first-half inaccuracies cost us."

S.Yamada--JT