READING the runes of Scottish Rugby – OK, the BTL (below the line) comments on The Offside Line – I was struck with the general attitude towards the announcement of the Scotland squad for the 2024 Guinness Six Nations.
This can be summed-up in one word; that word is: “Whatever”. It would be fair to say, the body of the Rugby Kirk is under-whelmed at the names announced. Even the left-field picks, the four uncapped players on the 39-strong roster, these failed to greatly enthuse the punters.
Of course, it would help, if, as with World Cup squads, there was a definite number of players who could be nominated for a tournament squad; maybe that's something for CEO Tom Harrison, Chairman Ronan Dunne and the Six Nations team at Ballsbridge, Dublin to think about.
To get back to the chosen 39 players:
21 forwards
18 backs
squad average age - 27 years
squad average caps – 26 caps
forwards average age – 28 years
backs average age – 26 years
forwards average caps – 28 caps
backs average caps – 24 caps
There are 28 survivors (16 forwards – 12 backs) from the 2023 Rugby World Cup squad. So, the Scotland squad is experienced, they know each other well, they have been together for a wee while, so partnerships have been established – more-so given the make-up of the extended squad:
15 Glasgow players
13 Edinburgh players
11 Exiles – from 8 different clubs
The 39 players in the squad include no fewer than 11 potential club groupings - front rows, boilerhouse pairings, back row trios, half-back pairings, stand-off/inside centre pairings, centre pairings, back row combinations, so getting the squad to gel quickly and efficiently should not be a problem.
I have a good feeling about this Six Nations, provided we get off to a winning start.
Another thing – why 39 players? All six squads were announced this week, Gregor Townsend went with the 39 players, as previously mentioned. England's Steve Borthwick named a 36-man squad, while the other four national coaches each went with a 34-man squad; although, Ireland's Andy Farrell named, in addition to his main squad, three “Trainees” - younger Irish players going there for the experien
My only problem with the squad is its size. Nobody else has as-large a squad and I feel ours may be a case of picking too-many players, as outlined in the last paragraph. But, perhaps picking the largest squad is typical of the lack of cost control within the SRU.
I appreciate, in the grand scheme of things, dropping three or five members of the squad, and thus having to pay for fewer rooms, meals etc, for the duration of the pre-tournament camp, of the tournament itself, - which includes a week of warm weather training in Spain - would not make a huge dent in the bloated costs being borne by the SRU under the present management, but, controlling costs better would be a start.
Another bone of contention with the squad has been the “left-field” selections: Alec Hepburn, Will Hurd, Aaron Reed and Harry Paterson.
Paterson, young, Scottish-bred, plays for Edinburgh; that goes down as a good pick.
Hurd, young for a prop, Scottish age group experience, that also goes down as a good pick.
Hepburn (pictured below), 30 year-old, Australian-born, already capped by England and discarded; that's a definite WFT??? selection.
Ditto, Reed, definite left-field pick, might work, might not – the jury's out.
In the case of Hurd, he was given a Glasgow contract as a youngster, but let go, thereby joining a lengthy list of young, Scottish props, released by one or other of our two professional clubs: George Hunter, Alex Allan, Steven Findlay, Gary Strain, Adam Nicol, Euan McLaren, Charlie Capps, Euan McQuillin, George Thornton, Tom Lambert, Murray McCallum, Tom Banatvalu, Callum Norrie and D'Arcy Rae. I also found: Grant Shiells, Jack Cosgrove, Nick Beavon and Kevin Bryce as I tried to put together a similar list for Edinburgh players, but it proved impossible to find listings for the Edinburgh squads past 2018, so, obviously this is an incomplete list.
However, to see at least 19 young Scottish props, only four of whom won even a token cap, released by our professional teams in the past decade, beggars the question – just who is making decisions on what players to pick for the two professional clubs, and what is being done to train them on to become useful pro players? Clearly, they cannot all have been duff players, but, what does that say about duff coaches within the SRU system? Add the likes of Steven Langwell, currently with Bristol Bears in the Gallagher Premiership, and you have to ask about decision-making within the SRU.
Maybe if some of the rejects had had better coaching and encouragement, we would not be recruiting England rejects to our Six Nations squad. A few less Fijians, Canadians, Italians, Tongans, Samoans and Argentinians recruited by Glasgow and Edinburgh might have given game time to some of the young Scots, who spent their time in the professional game, holding tackle bags and making-up the numbers.
Looking beyond the front row and we find, in the last decade 305 players have been selected for the Scotland Under-20 squads for either the Under-20 Six Nations or the Under-20 World Cup. Of these players, a mere 30 – that's a 9.8% measure, have trained-on to become full internationalists.
That figure actually compares favourably with that for England. In the same period, they have capped 349 players at Under-20 level, of whom 34 – 9.7% have gone on to win full England caps. However, a further 11 including oor ain Cam Redpath have gone on to represent other countries at full level. Include them in the figures and England has a 12.9% train-on rate – perhaps indicating England is 32% better than us at identifying and nurturing young talent.
These figures bring us to one of the great arguments around selecting national squads, one more often in the past heard around Scottish international football squads.
This argument goesL because England has more players from which to choose, you've more chance of being dropped after a bad performance, because there are perhaps three or four equally-talented alternatives; whereas, it is often more-difficult to get dropped from a Scotland squad after a bad game – because there are fewer alternatives. Perhaps the same applies in Rugby Union. Indeed, it used to be said, a few guys got capped by Scotland, who would never have got near the team had they been English, Irish or Welsh, because we had fewer alternatives.
The same argument is used around our imports – if you're not considered good enough for Australia, or New Zealand, if you meet the ancestral qualification criteria, head for Scotland and you'll get capped.
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