6N Scotland v Italy debrief: a win to savour but more evidence of progress required
Yesterday at 05:00 PM
MUCH to digest and plenty to ponder for Gregor Townsend, his coaching team, his players and – for that matter – Scotland supporters, following Saturday’s Six Nations opening weekend win over Italy at Murrayfield.
On the plus side, five well-taken tries for a bonus point win to get the ball rolling in the first hit-out of a campaign is nothing to be sniffed at, with Rory Darge leading by example from openside flanker as an absolute titan of the breakdown, an important carrier and his team’s top-tackler (with 13 tackles). If his influence dipped slightly during the last year or so following his impressive arrival on the international stage during the 2022 Six Nations, this was a timely demonstration of the 24-year-old’s ability to pile pressure on the opposition with his relentless intensity. If he carries on in this vain throughout the Six Nations then it will be very hard for Andy Farrell to not view the Glasgow Warriors man as a player who could make an impact with the Lions in Australia this coming summer.
Meanwhile, Huw Jones was at his deadly best as a finisher and a support player, if not necessarily as a set-play strike-runner (where he can be so effective when Scotland’s attack is in a groove), Blair Kinghorn was majestic at full-back, and the typically industrious Zander Fagerson carried more often than anyone else on the park apart from Kinghorn.
6N: Scotland v Italy: Blair Kinghorn secures bragging right over Toulousian clubmate
6N: Scotland v Italy: Scotland player ratings
6N: Scotland v Italy reaction: Huw Jones ready to move on quickly from hat-trick heroics
But, it was hard to escape a sense of a déjà vu as the Scots raced into a commanding early lead only to let the Azzurri back into it during the third-quarter. Fortunately, unlike 11 months ago, Townsend’s boys managed to recapture control of the contest and stretch away to a comfortable enough win on paper in the end, ensuring that there is no need for alarm bells to be sounded yet.
Whether they would have as easily regained the initiative if this game had been in Rome, with a raucous Stadio Olimpico raising the temperature, is a moot point, of course – but there’s not much we can take from this match to assuage concerns that progress over the last year has not been at the pace required for Scotland to shatter the glass ceiling which has contained their ambitions for so long, to become serious title contenders.
While Scotland’s opponents can to varying degrees view this campaign as a step in an evolutionary process building towards the next World Cup, Townsend finds himself in a weird kind of no-man’s-land as a coach. A lack of internal pressure from an employer which has had a power vacuum at the very top of the organisation for the best part of a year, if not longer, means that his position is perhaps the most secure of all the Six Nations coaches, but he knows that only two third place finishes in the Six Nations alongside two World Cup pool stage exits in his seven and a half years at the helm means that he doesn’t have the luxury of being able to say that it is time to try out something new.
And this, perhaps, helps explains why he went with two veterans in the second-rows – the engine of the pack – for this match in the shape of Jonny Gray and Grant Gilchrist, aged 30 and 34 respectively, neither of whom had played for more than a month before Saturday due to relatively minor injuries, and both of whom struggled to impose themselves on the match at the level they routinely did during their heydays.
Scotland’s options in this position are, of course, limited at the moment by the unavailability though injury of Scott Cummings and Max Williamson – almost certain match-day 23 selections if fit – as well as emerging man Jare Oguntibeju (a 22-year-old who has only played three pro games for Glasgow Warriors but has already been name-checked by Townsend and others as a talent of significant potential). But there are other options, who you suspect might add an impetus from being individuals at different stages in their career trajectory, with their best years still ahead of them.
Gregor Brown is a Tadhg Beirne-type hybrid player. He sees himself as a blindside flanker, but is happy to slot into the middle-row, where he can provide dynamism as well as the technical excellence too offset any deficit in bulk when compared to an out-and-out lock (according to Scottish Rugby’s own stats, Brown is 17st 2lbs and 6ft 3ins, while Gray is 19st 1lb and 6ft 5ins and Gilchrist is 18st 8lbs and 6ft 5ins).
“On the summer tour, he [Brown] played both back-row and second-row, and John Dalziel kept giving me feedback around how natural a line-out forward he is, how easy he is to lift, how quickly he gets off the ground,” said Townsend last Thursday, when naming Brown on the bench for the Italy match. “What we were seeing in his game was real skill at ball-carrying and also passing, nuisance and aggression in defence. To put them together, and he has done that really throughout December and into January [for Glasgow Warriors], is really good. He was competing very hard to start in the second-row.
“You could say that [he’s too small], but there are a lot of second-rows that maybe we think they’re a lot bigger than they are, but they’re only around about 115 kilos [just over 18st],” the coach added. “It’s what they do technically to make sure that they are delivering in the set-piece, in the maul, and in the scrum in particular, that maybe a guy at 130 kilos doesn’t have to focus on the technique. And scrum-wise, he [Brown] is very, very good. Pieter de Villiers [Scotland’s scrum coach] will talk him up as our best technical scrummager, and he looks like a big second-row when he plays – he looks bigger than probably his weight is.”
Brown certainly made an impact off the bench on Saturday with 10 tackles in his 23 minutes on the park, during which time he also hit rucks like they were going out of fashion and carried hard in heavy traffic, and may have pushed his way into the starting XV for Sunday. Edinburgh’s Marshall Sykes is the other surviving second-row from Townsend’s original squad selection and is also a man with plenty to prove.
Meanwhile, the decision to wait for over a week after Cummings picked up his injury playing for Glasgow Warriors against Harlequins on 18th January before calling-up Cameron Henderson of Leicester Tigers (a former Scotland Under-20s player who has now played seven games on the bounce with five 80 minute performances since recovering from a year out with a knee injury) and Ewan Johnson (another Under-20s veteran who plays for Oyonnax in France’s second) meant that pair only had two proper training days before the Italy match, so were never in serious contention to be involved. Now, with a full week in the environment completed, they could become serious contenders against Ireland next Sunday.
Stafford McDowall was solid and had some really good moments, but the arrival of Tom Jordan as his replacement at inside-centre on 57 minutes coincided with Scotland reclaiming their grip of a match which was in real danger of drifting away from them (although it was a moment of inspiration from Darcy Graham to create Jones’ second try which was the catalyst to momentum swinging back towards the home team).,
It feels like Jordan’s instincts as a player with significant stand-off experience can help relieve the pressure that Russell sometimes feels to “"try to pull flowers out of his backside" (as former Glasgow Warriors head coach Dave Rennie once colourfully described it) when he feels the game is not going his and his team’s way. There was a fair bit of that in Russell’s performance yesterday, trying just a bit too hard to find the killer moment when nothing much was doing, and he acknowledged as much afterwards.
“I had a few mistakes in that game, I threw a few loose offloads which obviously didn’t help the team, and for me personally that’s frustrating.” he said. “I think the mistakes, the looseness we had, were individual things so that should be easy enough to fix.”
The key role Jordan played in the lead-up to Jones’ third, match-securing try – when he demanded the ball from George Horne instead of letting the forwards have another rumble, then released a flat pass to his outside-centre who delivered an excellent finish – was an example of what Jordan can offer in that second-receiver role.
Jordan is certainly slighter than McDowall, but concerns about Scotland’s midfield being lightweight if Townsend does decide to go with the New Zealander at No 12 disregards the ferocity with which he launches himself at every contact situation, the improvements Jones on his outside has made as a defender, and the fact that Russell on his inside isn’t exactly a shrinking violet on the physical side of the game either.
“He [Jordan] was one of the options to play 12 in this game, but Stafford did really well, was solid and probably didn’t get the chances that guys outside him got in terms of the ball into space,” said Townsend when asked after the game if the sub had played his way into the starting XV to face Ireland. “But there is also the benefits of the team playing again, having had that experience together, having trained for now two weeks together, so I wouldn’t have thought the selection would make too many changes, but we’ll see.”
It would be an unhelpful snub to take the co-captaincy off Russell at this stage: but is it an extra responsibility on top of his organisational role as stand-off that the free-spirited playmaker could do without? If Scotland do – god-forbid – find themselves Sione-less again any time in the near future, Darge certainly looks like a guy who is equipped to do the job all by himself.
- You can book your Six Nations hospitality and VIP tickets with Seat Unique HERE, an Official Hospitality Partner of The Murrayfield Experience
6N: Scotland v Italy: Blair Kinghorn secures bragging right over Toulousian clubmate
The post 6N Scotland v Italy debrief: a win to savour but more evidence of progress required appeared first on Scottish Rugby News from The Offside Line.
