London Scottish 26 Leeds Carnegie 15: Leeds caught cold by Scottish to leave coach Lawes fuming

In an error-strewn display not too dissimilar to the opening day defeat against Nottingham, the visitors never recovered from being 20 points down after 35 minutes.

Lowes said: “We came down here wanting a good start to the game and we got off to a really poor start and then we started to panic. So I was really disappointed at half-time.”

“I’m not too bothered about the scoreboard, it’s just more about how you play and how you apply yourselves and that opening period we were just nowhere near where we can be.”

After a cagey opening seven minutes from both sides, Leeds were penalised for not rolling away and Daniel Newton opened the scoring with a 22-metre penalty for the hosts.

With all the play coming in the visitors half, Carnegie were lucky not to fall further behind with Newton’s second penalty attempt sailing wide having opted to go for the posts after James Doyle was pinged for coming in from the side.

Having collected Craig Hampson’s box kick, Scottish worked the ball out wide to full-back Jim Thompson who raced over for the game’s first try and Newton added the extras.

Leeds’ afternoon soon went from bad to worse when the hosts’ counter attack found gaping holes in the visitors defence allowing captain Mark Bright to crash over and Newton kicked the extras.

But with a minute remaining in the first half, Lowes’ side enjoyed a rare spell of possession in the Scottish half and having been penalised for offside, Alex Lozowski slotted over the penalty to reduce the arrears to 17 points at the interval.

Buoyed by their strong finish to the first 40, Leeds scored straight from the kick-off with Pete Lucock crossing over in the corner but Lozowski’s conversion attempt drifted wide.

Another penalty from Newton minutes later kept the home side’s points tally ticking over.

An excellent push at a five-metre scrum had the hosts under pressure, and having gained possession, Oli Goss’s smart offload found it’s way to Stevie McColl – who trained with Scotland last week – to power his way over under the posts and replacement Glyn Hughes added the conversion.

With time running out and Leeds in search of a try that would have secured them a losing bonus point, referee John Meredith penalised them for killing the ball and London Scottish held out.

London Scottish: Thompson, Doneghan, Grove, Reay (Gidlow 75), Mantella, Newton, Pasqualin, Irish (Kilbane 65), Kwasnicki, Francis (Thiede 51), Spivey (Russell 56), Lyons (Stagg 66), Best, Pennycook, Bright.

Leeds Carnegie: McColl, Goss, Lucock (Hughes 63), Burdon, Doherty (Griffin 54), Lozowski, Hampson, Harris (Lockwood 49), Graham (Nilsen 56), Currie (Imiolek 62), Smith (Hannay 62), Green, Rowan, Doyle, Burrows (Beck 47).

Referee: J Meredith (RFU).