6N: Rory Darge ready to help Scotland become masters of their own destiny
01/22/2025 05:00 PM
TWO inaugurations restoring previous regimes to high office happened on Monday. While Donald Trump wasted little time initiating his ‘MAGA revolution’ after being sworn into office in Washington with a series of radical executive orders, it was a more measured affair in west Edinburgh, with Rory Darge and Finn Russell being asked by Scotland rugby head coach Gregor Townsend to reprise the co-captaincy partnership they previously fulfilled during the 2024 Six Nations, in place of the injured Sione Tuipulotu.
No sooner had Darge accepted the metaphorical chains of office than he was jetting off on an overseas glad-handing mission, attending – alongside Townsend – the official 2025 Six Nations launch event in Rome. In stark contrast to the USA’s recently re-elected commander-in-chief, the Scotland flanker is not the sort of character to shout the odds about turning the established order upside down and punishing those who have wronged him win the past – instead he plans to help his team add the finishing touches to a project he believes has been building over several years.
“It just feels like there’s more focus coming into this campaign, the conversations that we had earlier [within the squad] were really encouraging because everyone was saying the same thing,” explained Darge. “And I know that sounds like, 'well, why is that encouraging?', but it is. It means that we’re all aligned from day one and there’s just a real focus to this.'
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"Pressure is a good word but it’s not a sort of negative pressure that’s getting on top of you and weighing you down,” added the 24-year-old, after being asked how important it is that the team delivers a campaign matching their potential in this Six Nations – Townsend’s eighth in charge – having never finished above third in the championship in 25 attempts since Italy joined the party at the turn of the century.
“It's a pressure that’s motivating you to come in on a Monday and work hard despite sore bodies,” he continued. “It's a pressure where we’ve realised as a squad that we’re in control of what we do, nobody else.
"I don’t think you ever get any real victory or experience, any triumph, without going through trials and tribulations and putting in work but coming up short, learning, and putting in more work. That’s been our story. Last year the losses that we had still stick with us but there are things that we take from all of them, and we’ve not lost that belief or ambition that we can still win something and that’s the main thing.
“The exciting thing with us is the potential. We’ve got a massive amount of ambition. I think that’s really important as a team to have ambition. And the reason you have it is because if you were to do something special at a Six Nations it inspires a nation of young kids who are watching the Scotland team doing something for the first time in however long.”
There is no escaping the fact that Tuipulotu will be a huge miss as both a player and a leader, but Darge is adamant that there are places of capable filling the inside-centre slot to the standard set in recent seasons by their now struck skipper, and that there are enough strong personalities across the squad to ensure that the mentality will be where it needs to be throughout the campaign.
"I’m excited. I’m obviously gutted for Sione on a personal level. He’s my mate and I think his form [recently] was honestly, at times, hard to believe,” said Darge. "Every week he would just come and perform and push the bar even further, and it was really exciting to see how he was going to come into this campaign. But I am also massively excited to get the chance to co-captain with Finn again after getting the experience of it last year.
"I think I have to lead how I lead and use the guys around me and Finn. We’ve been asked a couple of times about how the co-captaincy works. Every team in the Six Nations will have a leadership group who the captains who are here today [at the Six Nations launch] will lean on to deliver on attack or defence, the different aspects of the game, the more emotional side of things or the more technical side of things.
"It’s no different to the way we’re doing things in Scotland. We’re going to have to use the experience amongst the squad, especially that back line – there’s a lot of experience there. You’ve got Huw Jones who’s played a lot at 13, he’s over 50 caps, Blair Kinghorn, over 50 caps, Duhan and Darcy and hopefully Kyle Steyn will come back fit at some point. I’ve played a lot of rugby for Scotland and we’re a fairly settled squad and fairly aligned in terms of what we need to do.
"There are things that happen that are uncontrollable and big players getting injured is one of those things. For me it’s similar to a referee decision that goes against you and is incorrect, sometimes it happens.
"Rugby is a dynamic game, so what is your response to that? Do you roll over and accept it and think, 'well that was the wrong call, they’re going to score from this line-up' or do you control what you can control and stand up to the adversity that you’re going through?"
Darge added that he isn’t worried about the responsibility of co-captaincy detracting from his own performance levels, having leaned from his previous stint that the key is to focus on performance and treat the leadership role as an entirely separate matter.
"I’ve had experience of captaining, I’ve had experience of co-captaining, I’ve had experience in leadership groups. I don’t think you can do that – lead, speak in meetings and huddles – unless you’re doing everything you can from a performance point of view and playing well. That's massively important," he explained.
"The experience of captaining before has been massive for me. I understand that the extra responsibilities – like this event – that lie on your shoulders can’t take away from anything. It doesn’t creep into my prep for a game or my prep for training, and I think that’s a really important thing to have in your mind, to have awareness that you separate the two. There are extra things you have to do as a captain, you do them, but you still prep as well as you possibly can.
“We’ve had a meeting as a wider leadership group. One of the things that came out of that was to make sure that if you feel like you have something to say or you want to have a conversation that you just have it. One thing that came out of the early leadership meeting was that we’re going to meet more often, never shy away from these conversations to make sure there’s 100 percent clarity on how we lead to help the boys as well.
“I don’t take any of this for granted, not one bit of it. Playing for Scotland is a proud moment for sure, captaining Scotland is definitely a proud moment, but with it comes a massive amount of responsibility.
“To be honest with you, the general sort of feeling in camp is one of belief, there’s excitement but there’s a real focus on what we need to do because that’s the important part."
And as for the key question of who out of co-captains will be responsible for the coin toss ahead of kick-off, Darge take a typically pragmatic view.
"I’ll let Finn do that, he’s probably got the [magic touch],” he chuckles. “You know, it’s funny because there’s loads of things like that that you might not think of because you’re thinking about getting ready to play against Italy. And then when you get to a game day and there’s all these little things. But yeah, I'd imagine Finn probably does the coin toss better than me."
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