Greig Laidlaw wants Scotland to focus on rankings

Scotland captain Greig Laidlaw has urged his team to improve their rankings, keeping in mind the 2019 World Cup in Japan.

Scotland are currently placed at ninth with 79.78 rating points and they are scheduled to take on Argentina next at Murrayfield on Saturday. A win here for Laidlaw's men can help them sneak past the Pumas, who have 80.71 rating points and are positioned eighth.

The draws for the 2019 World Cup will be announced in May next year based on the World Rugby Rankings. During the 2015 edition, Scotland found themselves in batch of third seeds and were fortunate to have landed in same ground as Samoa, who were in the second seeds during that time rather than one of the heavyweights.

"The rankings issue is clearly very important. When you have World Cups coming up they are always in the back of your mind.

“We certainly don’t want to drop out of the pot of second seeds. I’d rather not be doing that if we can help it. World Cups are hard enough.

“Statistically in the past, teams always play better at the World Cup, so we want to give this Scotland side the best possible chance of getting as far in the competition as possible.

“Even though it’s further down the line, it’s important we win as many games as we can.”

In their previous game at Murrayfield, Scotland were edged out by Australia 22-23 in a close encounter after the home team had a nine-point lead in the 51st minute. Laidlaw admitted that Scotland need to be more disciplined if they are to win more games.

“We can always be smarter. A couple of boys will be disappointed with some of the penalties given away and which allowed Australia to hold onto field position.

“We were pretty upset with each other and some of the decisions we made. We made mistakes at crucial times and when we spoke about it after the game we realised it was down to our ill-discipline.”