Scotland chose the scenic town of South Queensferry, 10 miles to the west of Edinburgh, to announce their Rugby World Cup squad. On the shores of the Firth of Forth with the Forth Rail Bridge, the Forth Road Bridge and the Queensferry Crossing looming majestically in the background there was an obvious headline just waiting to be written, which it duly was. “Scotland: A bridge too far?”
Just like the relationship arc of Finn Russell and Gregor Townsend, it’s not that straightforward. The easy answer is, yes, this brutal group that Scotland find themselves in will prove too much for them. They have South Africa in Marseille on the opening weekend of the group stage this time and Ireland in Paris on the final weekend.
Given that the Scots have lost their last seven Tests against South Africa by an average of 20 points and have lost their last eight against Ireland by an average of 14 points a superficial analysis wouldn’t give them much of a chance. In many of those games, the Scots were overpowered in key moments and pressured into self-destructive errors in others. That’s still a fear for them now.
Maybe – probably – history will repeat itself in France, but Scotland are quite obviously dangerous. “We’ll be outsiders, but that gives us a nothing-to-lose mentality,” says Townsend, who had a decent Six Nations and a strong August.
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Their attacking game is razor sharp. They’re not just scoring tries – four in Saint-Etienne against a fully loaded France – but scoring tries from improbable places. And It’s not just about Russell’s verve and vision. Darcy Graham missed the Six Nations, but the buzz bomb is back and he’s scored seven tries in his last four Tests.
There’s a split-personality dimension to this Scotland team that makes them dicey opponents, an unpredictability that means anyone playing them should approach with caution
They have Graham, Duhan van der Merwe and Kyle Steyn to pick from out wide. Steyn, whose father was head of security for Nelson Mandela throughout the great man’s presidency, scored twice in Saint-Etienne. “We’re trying to play a wide-wide game and get the ball into these danger men’s hands,” says Russell.
The Scottish midfield has its own nickname – Huwipulotu – after Huw Jones and Sione Tuipulotu, the best blend the team has had in the centre since John Leslie and Alan Tait in the Five Nations winning side of 1999.
Stuart Hogg has retired, not that you’d have noticed. His name is never mentioned because Blair Kinghorn, who would surely have usurped him in France even if Hogg hadn’t exited the scene, has been another playmaker, an incredible athlete with a huge skill-set.
Yes, all of this has been said before and yet every game between these countries since 2018 has delivered the same outcome. Ireland have got into Scotland’s heads over the years and there’s a fair share of demons rattling around in there.
Are there reasons to think that this time will be any different? Not really, but there’s a split-personality dimension to this Scotland team that makes them dicey opponents, an unpredictability that means anyone playing them should approach with caution.
Scotland have been on a journey, as they say. It’s worth looking back on the fallout from that evisceration in Yokohama four years ago. It was the darkest moment of the Townsend regime, which began in 2017. He was lucky to survive it, but he learned from it. A freewheeling player in his day, Townsend, as coach, had gone in a different direction. He liked to control everything, everywhere, all at once. Russell rebelled and Townsend changed.
It’s been turbulent, madly so at times. In 2021, Scotland beat England at Twickenham for the first time in 38 years and beat France in Paris for the first time in 22 years. All good? No. They soon detonated their own progress. In 2022, they had a lousy Six Nations and an even worse beginning to the autumn. Townsend and Russell were having problems again. The coach named three outhalves in his autumn squad and Russell wasn’t one of them.
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Watching Townsend trying to explain why lack of “form” and “consistency” were the reasons behind Russell’s omission was excruciating. We were now led to believe that he was the fourth-best 10. Ross Thompson, an untested young Glasgow Warrior with little game-time under his belt, was picked ahead of him. Fans were calling for the coach’s head. The SRU took their time in giving him an extended contract.
Everything is better now. The coach and his players are demonstrably happier. The camp is fun rather than some kind of Colditz. That’s not just coming from their public utterances, it’s coming through in off-the-record chats, too. Russell and Townsend are tight again. That’s the most obvious manifestation of the mood. Townsend even made him captain for a World Cup warm-up game against France at Murrayfield. Given where they were a year ago, that was a genuine, Wow, moment.
So Scotland are tracking well, but they’re murderously, and thrillingly, unreadable. They were heading for defeat at Twickenham in the Six Nations only to score 10 points in seven minutes at the end to win. The team try that clinched it was otherworldly.
They were losing 19-0 in Paris and then proceeded to outscore their hosts 21-6 in the next hour. Russell was immense. Just when they thought they were going to push on to win, they started making mistakes and lost. They’ve played the French three times this year and each one has been a thriller. The second, against an admittedly second-string but still exceptional France, came at Murrayfield in August.
They were losing 21-3 at the break, lost Zander Fagerson to a red card at 21-10 and still roared on to win 25-21. They scored 22 unanswered points in the second half, much of them with 14 players. How do you analyse that?
It was a similar story in Saint-Etienne. They were 27-10 behind after an hour and were hanging on. Mistakes pockmarked their game. They looked dead and buried. Then, from nowhere, they came alive. Van der Merwe scored in the 62nd minute, Rory Darge (a brilliant talent at openside), scored in the 68th minute and Steyn scored in the 73rd minute. Seventeen points in 11 minutes. Again, how are you supposed to get an angle on such a mad rugby team?
They lost to a late penalty and that fact wasn’t lost on any of the Scotland players. Their capacity to play firework rugby laden with skill and risk and frenzy is beyond question. The huge issue is can they deliver a performance that lasts closer to 80 minutes than 40? Can they avoid those minutes when the lights go out? After a stirring first half in their Six Nations meeting at Murrayfield, Ireland problem-solved on hoof and accelerated away to win. Scotland have yet to show enough of that nous.
The players feel that, on their day, they can beat anybody, but also feel that lighting it up for short passages of games isn’t going to cut it against Ireland and South Africa. Are they destined to be wild entertainers rather than consistent winners?
“It doesn’t matter what anyone says on the peripherals,” is how Jack Dempsey, the No 8 who played for Australia at the last World Cup, puts it. Dempsey has a Scottish grandfather and has benefited from the new World Rugby eligibility rule. “We know how good we can be if we are on it from beginning to end.”
And therein lies the challenge – from beginning to end without a game-defining lull in-between. If they can get that right, then they’ll be formidable. If. Ireland should still beat them, but, given Scotland’s mercurial nature, it wouldn’t do any harm to be wary of them, too.
Tom English is chief sports writer with BBC Scotland
