The Pulse Quickens

WITH the announcement of the Scotland team to face Ireland in Saturday's pre-World Cup warm-up game, the pulses are definitely quickening and the big show in the Land of the Long White Cloud will soon be upon us.

Andy Robinson's team is pretty-much as expected: inasmuch as nobody really had a clue as to what it would be, other than we expected one or two of the outsiders for a place on the aircraft to New Zealand to get a run out.

I would suggest that, by their restriction to the bench the youngsters Denton and Cuthbert will be challenged to make a serious impact off the bench, or reconcile themselves to watching the World Cup on TV. Likewise, big Jim Hamilton has to hit the ground running or he's toast.

Johnnie Beattie should still go, class is, after all, permanent - but he needs a biggish game while Dickinson, when he comes on, also has to get up to speed immediately or risk missing out.

I am looking forward to an entertaining game, which will hopefully lift our spirits on the build-up to the tournament and, for once, performance is more-important than the result.

I HAD to laugh at some of the English press coverage of the Phillips/Tindal nuptials in Edinburgh over the weekend. Talk about printing p!sh, it was wonderful.

Leaving aside such bad manners as referring to those of the Royal Family who have both Scottish and English titles by their English titles - rather than the Scottish ones and the hilarious use of the word "altar" for the communion table inside the Canongate Kirk - these merely reinforce my belief that Scotland is a small, far-off country of which those in the London media bubble know little and care even less.

What really got me laughing was the insinuation that the mainly English rugby players who filled the Tindall side of the kirk were up there on an old-fashioned bender.

Aye right - I am certain strong drink was consumed, but any notion that those England World Cup squad members who were there went at the bevvy in the manner of an Old Fartingers Extra B XV on an Easter Tour to the West Country, circa 1960, were surely wide of the mark.

Today's top players don't bevvy like it's 1974 - such is their level of fitness, the demands made on them as regards training and conditioning, they couldn't possibly live with an old-style team in the bar - just as the old-style team couldn't live with them on the park.

I am told by several old-timers, who are still inside the game as coaches, directors of rugby and so forth that today's players are either fully TT or drink so little that a whiff from a newly-opened bottle of 18-year-old Glenlivet would flatten them immediately.