6N: Jack Mann prepares to battle for Scotland place
Yesterday at 05:00 PM
YOU’RE out for a quiet dinner with family, looking forward to a relaxing evening – and then your phone goes off and everything changes.
We’ve all been there – well, up to a point receiving good news or bad news or simply something that makes us alter our plans. The crucial difference in Jack Mann‘s case is that the person on the other end of the phone was Gregor Townsend, telling the Glasgow No 8 that he was in the Scotland squad for the Six Nations.
"I was actually out for dinner with my mum,” Mann explains. “We were at [Glasgow restaurant] Crabshakk Botanics. It's a nice place – I don't mind giving them a shout-out. I was having scallops.
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"I wasn’t expecting a call. My phone was on silent, so I didn't get Gregor's call initially.
"He left a message saying: 'Give me a call when you get a chance'. So I called him back outside the restaurant.
"Went back in, told mum, and she burst into tears.
"That was a nice moment. Then we called my dad and my sister from the restaurant."
That call was the culmination – so far at least – of a remarkable turnaround in the 25-year-old’s fortunes. Clearly, the transformation will only be complete if and when he makes his Scotland debut, but to have come this far is already a significant achievement for a player who was out of action for nearly two years from late 2022.
The injury nightmare began for Mann when he was concussed on his Warriors debut, an away win against Bath in late 2022. As he had had two concussions already that year, it was deemed best to stand him down for the rest of the season, as a fourth concussion would have forced a longer break. Then, a couple of weeks after finally getting back to training, he suffered a serious ankle injury.
In the end, his second game for Franco Smith's side came 720 days after his first, towards the end of last year. He has since put in a run of performances that first got people speculating about a national call-up, and then persuaded Townsend to make that phone call.
Having been determined to battle his way into Scotland contention, Mann may not have been totally surprised by his inclusion as one of only two uncapped members of the squad along with Saracens fly-half Fergus Burke. But the timing of it was certainly a little ahead of his own expectation.
"I definitely didn’t expect it to be quite as sudden as it has been in the last few weeks, but it was definitely always a goal of mine,” he explains. "A couple of weeks ago, I was thinking maybe a summer tour [with Scotland] would be a good goal. But honestly, the last five, six, seven weeks, I’ve just been trying to focus on making the most of my opportunity at Glasgow. Because I knew that if I was to get myself into a Scotland squad, that would be how I was going to do it.
"I felt like I could definitely live up to the standard that they require to be in here. But at the same time, I feel like in the Scottish squad at the minute, the back row is one of the most competitive positions. So I thought, 'Maybe not this time, especially with it being the Six Nations as well'. But I’m buzzing with the opportunity."
He has battled his way back to fitness. He has battled his way into the Glasgow team. So why not battle his way into the Scotland team too?
“That's the target,” he says. “I feel like I’ve learned so much from especially guys in my position like Matt Fagerson and Jack Dempsey. Having those guys around at Glasgow and then also in camp as well, getting to learn off them is massive.
“At the same time, I still want to push for my opportunity as much as they’ve cemented themselves. I’m happy to learn off them. I still have to try and push for my own spot.”
Having been sidelined for so long, Mann had ample time to think about possible alternatives to being a professional rugby player, and his first option would have been to join the family business. “I’m very fortunate in that my parents are farmers, so I have that. I used to be in the academy at Edinburgh, got let go and then went home to work on the farm for a couple of years while I was playing at Heriot’s. It wouldn’t necessarily be what I might want to do, but it’s nice to have that option if everything went south with rugby.
'That was my plan during the two years off if Glasgow didn’t keep me on. It was quite precarious. After I did my head [injury], I wasn’t signed at Glasgow and then, very fortunately, they gave me a six-month contract until I was back.
'They’d offered me a year-and-a-half contract until the end of the season. I was about to sign that, and then I broke my ankle. We still signed that, fortunately.”
The faith that the Warriors showed in Mann then has been wholly vindicated over the past couple of months. And, although his current contract is due to run out in the summer, it looks likely that he will sign a new one.
'We’re in negotiations at the minute. That will all come to light in the next month or so. I would certainly like to stay.
“Glasgow's an amazing club. They have built to winning the URC last year, which was gutting to not be a part of. At the same time, it’s still amazing to be a part of the squad, even if I wasn’t there in person.”
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