Six Nations 2023: Scotland's 'confident but inconsistent' golden ...

25 Feb 2023

Scotland could be more than halfway to a first Grand Slam in 33 years by Sunday evening, but if, as is more likely, they sink to third or fourth in the table with defeat to France, a question will rear its ugly head again: what next?

No one likes to label any group of players a “Golden Generation” – because more often than not there is little gold involved in those who bear the moniker – but that is what Scotland have got in a team led by Stuart Hogg and Finn Russell. Four Scots started the first British and Irish Lions Test in South Africa, a first for 24 years. A Scottish player has won Player of the Championship in the Six Nations in three of the last seven tournaments. No country has won it more since 2016.

And yet serial winners they are not. Consistency, the hallmark of all great sides, has been sorely lacking; for all the flamboyant rugby and famous wins over the English, Scotland have not finished better than fourth in the Six Nations table since 2018. Two steps forward, one (or more?) step back.

The conception of this side was the Glasgow Warriors team that was prepared to blood young players under Sean Lineen and then flourished under Gregor Townsend. Eventually, they secured a 31-13 victory over Munster in the Pro12 final with a XV littered with familiar faces: Hogg, Russell, Duhan van der Merwe, Fraser Brown and Jonny Gray were all part of that squad and supplied the core of a Scotland team which came within one controversial toot of Craig Joubert’s whistle of beating Australia in a World Cup quarter-final. They would have faced Argentina in the semi-finals, a team many believe they would have beaten.

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But in that World Cup and since, Townsend made Scotland famous for a brand of exuberant, running rugby that was alien to the Murrayfield faithful even 10 years ago, but reminiscent of the side that won the last Five Nations Championship in 1999.

“How Gregor played the game is how they’re playing the game,” Kenny Logan, part of that side and who scored more than 200 points for his country, tells i. He was often wearing 11 when Townsend wore 10.

“The ability of the team is there. They have that belief that you want to have a go. They’ve got a lot of that.

“They’ve got the accuracy too, and they’ve got some great players. If there was a Lions selection now, they’d probably take most of that back division, easily, and that’s without discussing the forwards.”

He adds, with optimism: “And even if they lose to France by a couple of points, and they lose to Ireland by a couple of points, we’re playing against two teams that are one and two in the world – and everyone’s going ‘Scotland can beat them’.

“And we can beat them, on our day, but we need more than ‘on our day’, we need to be fully engaged, playing well and being consistent. That’s probably their biggest weakness over the years. They’ve won big games, but it’s not been consistent.”

He’s right. Scotland have lost just one of their last six Calcutta Cup matches, winning as many matches against the Auld Enemy in the last five years than they had in the previous 30. When they go to Paris on Sunday, they will do so having won their last time out for the first time since 1999.

From the nadir of the 2015 Six Nations when they lost all five matches, Scotland have become a force to be feared in European rugby – but while trophyless, there will always be those who say they could have been so much more.

Scottish rugby is well accustomed to such near misses, the result of two decades of brave defeat, punctuated by occasional heroic victory.

Those same names remain at the heart of this squad, which is a blessing and a curse. At 28, Scotland have the highest average age of any Six Nations side this year, albeit it is a tight grouping from 26 (Italy and France) up to the Scottish mark.

There is no coincidence: World Cup winning sides generally have an average age of between 27 and 28, but Scotland have been consistently the oldest home nation group over the last two years. In theory, this side is peaking, just in time for the World Cup. But there is some concern over what comes next.

The Scotland hierarchy of course will only care about France this autumn, where if they go at least one better than that fateful quarter-final in 2015, it will be hailed as a success.

But those with more long-range vision will look at the 2027 edition in Australia and realise that the central figures of this side will probably not make it that far. Hogg and Finn Russell will both be 34 – the latter will reach that age in the second week of the tournament, Hamish Watson is already in his 30s, so too Richie Gray, Grant Gilchrist and George Turner: all six will start against France in Paris on Sunday, where only two of the starting XV are 25 or younger. Their opponents will have five under-26s and another four on the bench. Blair Kinghorn, 26, is Scotland’s youngest replacement.

Is it systemic? A fear of giving young players a chance?

“The talent was always there, that was the annoying thing for me,” says Peter Wright, who was Scotland’s Under-19s and Under-20s coach when the likes of Russell, Hogg and Watson were coming through the ranks.

“We were almost frightened to give them a chance unless we really, really had to.”

Wright watched with dismay as Watson, defensively one of the best players around in his age group, was shunned by the SRU. He had come through the Leicester Tigers academy but qualified for Scotland through his Glaswegian grandfather and been capped at U20 level, but was told he was not good enough for the senior set-up.

Eventually, in part thanks to Wright’s campaigning, Watson was given a Scotland 7s contract and was then signed by Edinburgh. He did not make his full Scotland debut until 2015 but is now a British and Irish Lion and arguably his country’s most important player when fit.

“We’ve picked up guys, despite the system rather than because of it,” Wright adds.

“Jamie Bhatti [loosehead prop] is another one. He was released out of the Academy. He went away, worked in a slaughterhouse for years, did some doorman work. Then Melrose got in touch with him to go play down there.

“Eventually Glasgow signed him and the SRU tried to claim him as one of ours, who we’d brought through the system!”

Even Russell, Scotland’s great talisman, might have slipped through the net. As a teenager, he had not developed the kicking game that makes him so unique and dangerous. Instead, he ran the ball religiously and played at inside-centre for age group sides. He probably wasn’t good enough to go to the Junior World Championships in 2012, but Wright wanted him on the plane for his character.

“He was a funny guy and I liked that he has that smile on his face, like he does now,” Wright says.

“When you’re away for four weeks and you’re in camp, you need players that are going to bring a bit of humour so we had him in the squad.

“He was one of those guys who blossomed really late. Obviously he eventually went to Glasgow under Gregor and really blossomed from there which was really good but, there is a problem in Scotland that we sometimes discard players very, very young.”

Rugby Union - Six Nations Championship - Scotland v Wales - Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, Scotland, Britain - February 11, 2023 Scotland players celebrate after the match as Blair Kinghorn bites the ear of Finn Russell REUTERS/Russell CheyneFinn Russell (centre, gesturing) has become a key component of Scotland’s backline (Photo: Reuters)

If that problem persists, you have to fear that the current crop of youngsters may also find themselves on the scrapheap. After the pandemic, Scotland’s Under-20s lost 11 Six Nations games in a row, a streak they only snapped two weeks ago with an 18-17 win over Wales.

After a second straight Wooden Spoon in 2022, head coach Kenneth Murray had been blunt about the fact he had expected it to be a tough championship.

“There is a whole host of areas we’ve got to get better,” Murray said.

“We need to look at our talent identification and making sure that we get every player available to us who can be available to us, and we need to look at our competition programme to ensure that players coming into the Under-20s are playing as much as they can in a competition which is a good intensity.”

Wright points to the reliance on so-called project players, born and raised overseas but then asked to come to Scotland and qualify under residency rules, and a tendency to over-condition players in the gym without playing enough competitive rugby at a young age, connecting with Murray’s assessment.

But, if you take off the distances glasses for a moment, there are plenty of reasons to be positive. Even though England and Wales are hardly in rude health, Scotland will take “confidence and belief” from the victories over them.

“When you’ve got confidence and belief, that takes you to another level, because there’s no doubt in your mind, there’s only positivity,” Kenny Logan adds.

“There’s also this element of wanting to be their best because they’re going to World Cup year, so they know they’re going have to be able to beat South Africa or Ireland to get through to the World Cup knockouts.”

But that can wait. First France in Paris, and then Ireland at Murrayfield. Worries can be put to one side. For now, Scotland’s Grand Slam dream is alive.

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