Scotland lock Scott Cummings has urged his teammates to deliver a statement victory against the All Blacks when the two teams clash at Murrayfield on Saturday. Scotland has never defeated New Zealand in 33 previous attempts, a winless streak stretching back over 120 years. Gregor Townsend's side has come close in recent matches, notably last year's 25-17 defeat decided by a late try.
Cummings expressed his desire for Scotland to finally get over the line rather than being remembered as a team that nearly succeeded. "It would be up there [as a historic achievement]," Cummings said. "It’s obviously a massive occasion."
He emphasized the team's focus on improvement and avoiding the "nearly team" label. "We don’t want to get too excited and think about the history behind it. We’re just a team that wants to try and get better and improve in what we’ve been doing and not be that nearly team anymore," Cummings stated. "It’s just really important that we take it one foot at a time and don’t get ahead of ourselves."
Despite acknowledging the All Blacks' formidable reputation, Cummings is confident in Scotland's ability to compete. "We’ve got the All Blacks, an incredibly tough team, in front of us and we need to play our best rugby, but obviously a win would be a massive statement for us," he said. "The record against New Zealand has been mentioned but it’s not something that we’re focusing on. We don’t want to continue with this mindset: 'Oh, we get a crack at them'. We believe that we can compete."
Cummings added, "If we play our best rugby, we can compete with the best teams in the world and we can beat anyone. So we don’t want to go into this game just with the thought of: ‘Oh, we’ll give it a crack.’ We’re going in there to try and win and put out our best performance."
He believes the possibility of making history is a positive motivator. "We’ve chatted about the excitement about being the first Scotland team that could beat them more than the fact that we haven’t beaten them previously. I think it’s a positive for us to go out there and try and make history. But we know it’s going to take a full 80-minute performance."
Scotland has aspirations to consistently beat top Southern Hemisphere teams, having run South Africa close in the summer. Cummings recalled last year's narrow loss to the All Blacks, reiterating the team's ambition to finally overcome that hurdle. "It would be massive for us," he concluded.
Cummings also commented on facing his former coach, Dave Rennie, who is now the head coach of the All Blacks. "He’ll know some of our players, we’ll know some things about him, but a lot has changed. Probably the game’s changed a bit since he was coaching us," Cummings noted. "It’ll be exciting to get to play them against them again. The recent games between the teams have been really close and I’m sure this weekend will be another great game."