Simon Danielli celebrates after his second try against Romania © Getty Images

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Match Pack: Scotland survive mighty scare

Matches: Romania 24 - 34 Scotland

Players/Officials: Simon Danielli

Tournaments/Tours: Rugby World Cup

Teams: Argentina | England | Georgia | Romania | Scotland

Simon Danielli admitted that he and Scotland team-mates were less than pleased with their performance in Saturday's 34-24 win over Romania but he feels that they can take some pride out of the game for the way in which they narrowly avoided being the victims of a massive upset.

Andy Robinson's men were 24-21 down with just 12 minutes to go in their Pool B clash in Invercargill but after Chris Paterson had levelled matters with a penalty, Danielli spared Scotland's blushes by crossing twice in the final five minutes of the game.

After pulling off such a miraculous escape, Danielli is now hoping that the Scots can go from strength to strength and turn in a far better display in next Wednesday's clash with Georgia.

"As a team we're obviously not delighted with our performance, but in the last 10 minutes we were brilliant under the most pressure we could have been under, staring a potentially shock defeat in the face," he said.

"There's lessons to be learned, but we got the bonus point and got the win and know we've got a tough task ahead of us in this next game.

"Right now I think everyone wants to get back out again. We're under no illusions. Georgia will be licking their chops and will be dying to get into us.

"We're going to have to come back out and kick off where we left off in the last 10 minutes. We'll look at all the negatives, but I think we have to look at it positively as well."

Danielli was undoubtedly Scotland's saviour on the day but he argued that they would not have found themselves in need of a hero late on had he himself not butched a gilt-edged try-scoringn opportunity in the first half at a time when his side was in the ascendancy after tries from Mike Blair and Joe Ansbro.

"We scored a couple of good tries and should have scored another if a silly winger hadn't tried to step inside and go under the posts," Danielli said. "We were points up and credit to them they clawed their way back into it. It's about being more ruthless. It's nice to score tries, but I'm fairly hyper-critical - I wish it had been a hat-trick."

Danielli admitted that Scotland captain Alastair Kellock deserved enormous credit for keeping his troops calm after Romania No.8 Daniel Carpo had touched down on 68 minutes to put the Oaks ahead.

"There was a long time to go. Al (captain Alastair Kellock) brought us round, said this is not acceptable, but there's time to get back into this and we did. If we can play like we did in the first 15 minutes and the last 10 minutes for the whole game then we're a force to be reckoned with. But we can't afford to have that lapse like we did for 20 minutes either side of half-time."