A LONG time ago when life was so much more innocent than it is now, a chum of The Rucker, and, yes, I have some, said that if ever we have to worry about Eastern Samoa joining up with Western Samoa, then we will have a real problem playing against the chunky chaps from the Pacific.
I had to explain to my pal, who was never going to be Brain of Britain, that there was no such place as Eastern Samoa at that time. I tried to explain that due to generations of imperialism, Samoa had been carved up between the various powers over the decades.
In fact, the most important long-term occupants of that beautiful island group had been the Germans and New Zealanders.
Oh, and a rather important Scottish writer by the name of Robert Louis Stevenson, the Tusitala, the teller of tales, who was buried on Upolu, one of the islands of Samoa.
Scotland used to play Western Samoa but since 1997 the country has been known as Samoa. Again, due to imperial carve-ups, there is American Samoa to the east of the current country.
The people of that territory have the undoubted privilege of being ultimately governed by the United States of America – proprietor, one Donald Trump Esquire. Yep, the Donald is the President of American Samoa. God help them.
All of this is said because there is some kind of attitude in Scottish rugby that in the forthcoming autumn tests, Samoa will be an easy team to deal with. How wrong is that?
They may be 12th in the world rugby rankings but Samoan rugby is NEVER anything but difficult to deal with.
I distinctly recall the 1991 Rugby World Cup when the toughest tacklers of them all – their attitude has not changed and they still tackle like the “crack of doom” as Bill McLaren used to say – beat Wales in the group stages and gave Scotland a game in the quarter finals until Scottish technique allowed us to power away to victory.
The next time they came to Murrayfield, Western Samoa deservedly got a draw.
That was back in 1995, and overall we have beaten Samoa nine times to one with that single draw.
Yet in the last five games, the results have been close, never more so than in the 2015 World Cup when Samoa scored four tries to three but Grieg Laidlaw’s boot saw us home by 36-33.
Australia and New Zealand will produce a bigger challenge this autumn but let no one be in any doubt that Samoa are a real test. This will be Gregor Townsend’s first home match, and he is hampered by the fact that we are missing key players such as John Hardie – will we ever know the truth about his situation? – but Scotland has enough strength in depth to beat the South Sea Islanders and it would be a real setback if the visitors were to prevail.
It is now that we find out whether Scotland’s improvement in the last two years is sustainable and will continue, and put it this way – victory over Samoa is a must or we will be humiliated against the Wallabies and All Blacks.
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