NO matter what happens to Scotland in the RBS 6 Nations from now on, it is already clear that our men in the Thistle jersey will be the most entertaining team in the Championships.
They probably won’t win the tournament and a Grand Slam is surely beyond them, but the weekend showed that Scotland are playing a dynamic game that is winning fans everywhere.
It would be invidious to say that it is all down to one man, but ask anyone at any level of Scottish rugby and they will tell you that Vern Cotter has had a huge influence on the development of a ‘Scottish’ way of playing.
If you were objective and watched all three matches at the weekend, you could only conclude that the first game, that between Scotland and Ireland, was the best and most exciting match.
It had everything – tremendous tries, creative play, stalwart defence by both sides, real tussles in the scrum and lineout, barnstorming efforts in the loose by both packs, with Jonny Gray immense in making his record 27 tackles. In most parts of the play, Scotland did the leading.
None of this was accidental. Since Cotter arrived here, he has preached the virtues of attacking from anywhere and everywhere, of defending to the utmost, and of strength in depth in the squad. Only now do we really have more than 30 top class players all vying for contention.
Don’t just look at who was on the bench – look who didn’t even make the 23 for Saturday. Tim Visser, Henry Pyrgos, Grant Gilchrist, Stuart McInally, Jon Welsh, Ben Toolis, John Hardie, Alex Allan, Rob Harley – we already know they can come in and do a job for Scotland. And of course we have WP Nel, David Denton, Alasdair Dickinson, Duncan Taylor, Rory Sutherland, Rory Hughes and Peter Horne all on the recovery trail from injury.
That is what Cotter has done. He has made sure that with three exceptions – Hogg, Laidlaw, Jonny Gray – everyone else in the squad knows they face serious competition for their places. That really, really counts.
Above all, Hogg has restored the side’s self-respect and made Scotland hugely watchable.
Now the two final elements – confidence and a winning mentality – are seeping through the squad. They really can and do believe, now, that the Championship can be theirs and they need fear no team.
He’ll be gone in June, so let’s make a rallying call: win it for the Cotter!
IT is going to be a huge talking point for the rest of the tournament but we really must consider who will make the Lions.
After the weekend, and judging solely on form showed in the opening round, Scotland is looking at having at least six or seven members of the 37-strong British and Irish Lions’ squad to tour New Zealand later this year.
Stuart Hogg must be the starting full back for the Lions’ Tests, and he could be joined by fellow back three player Sean Maitland who I thought was outstanding in defence on Saturday. Both Johnny and Richie Gray – especially the former – are surely contenders for at least a squad place. On form alone Greig Laidlaw would start the first Test for the Lions, and might even make a good tour Captain, though I suspect that berth is booked for Alun Wyn Jones who had a stormer against Italy on Sunday. If Huw Jones continues his improvement he might make the squad, a remark that applies to Hamish Watson. It was very significant that Jeremy Guscott chose five Scots – Laidlaw, Johnny Gray, Hogg, Watson and Maitland – in his Lions’ XV published by the BBC on Monday. He emphasised that it was based purely on the form shown at the weekend, and he had five Scots, five Irish, three Welsh and only two English players in his line-up.
There were of course the usual bigoted comments on the BBC website under Guscott’s selection of which this one takes the biscuit for lunacy. Posted by CR6: ‘As an Englishman I will be supporting NZ in the summer. I regularly attend 6 nations matches and the attitude of the Celts towards England is absolutely disgraceful. That is why I will never support a British 15. England ‘til I die.’ Fortunately this viewpoint is in a tiny minority. As co-author of “Once Were Lions” I for one will fight to ensure that even after independence, players and supporters from Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England can all be part of the British and Irish Lions because as a matter of geography, if nothing else, we will still be on the islands of Great Britain and Ireland.
THIS column cannot pass without a personal tribute to the great Joost van der Westhuizen, taken from us by Motor Neurone Disease at the age of just 45.
Rugby was still an amateur sport when Joost started playing for South Africa, and it was his good fortune, and the Springboks’, that this dignified and courageous man was one of their onfield leaders at the 1995 World Cup so memorably won by the men in green.
In that famous final he stopped Jonah Lomu not once but three times with astonishingly brave tackles, including an absolutely perfect textbook ‘dropdown’ tackle in which he slid down the All Black giant’s legs to fell him at the ankles.
He was a fabulous player who led South African as captain with dignity.
To see that wonderful athlete stuck in a wheelchair was to know the meaning of tragedy. Now the body that had trapped him has failed, and his spirit is free. And what a spirit – unquenchable, irrepressible, invictus.
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