Toony Has Spoken As The 6N Squad Is Revealed

TOONY has spoken. The Honcho of our international aspirations today revealed his squad for the Guinness Six Nations, which, for us, kicks-off on Saturday, 3 February, when, at quarter to five, our match with Wales gets underway in Cardiff.

The 39-man squad named this afternoon reads -

Forwards: Ewan Ashman, Josh Bayliss, Jamie Bhatti, Andy Christie, Luke Crosbie, Scott Cummings, Jack Dempsey, Rory Darge, Grant Gilchrist, Richie Gray, Matt Fagerson, Zander Fagerson, Alec Hepburn, Will Hurd, Johnny Matthews, WP Nel, Jamie Ritchie, Pierre Schoeman, Sam Skinner, George Turner, Glen Young.

Backs: Adam Hastings, Ben Healy, George Horne, Darcy Graham, Rory Hutchinson, Huw Jones, Blair Kinghorn, Stafford McDowall, Harry Paterson, Ali Price, Cameron Redpath, Arron Reed, Kyle Rowe, Finn Russell, Kyle Steyn, Sione Tuipulotu, Duhan van der Merwe, Ben White.

There are some surprises in the selection, not least the four uncapped playters, Exeter loose-head Alec Hepburn, who already has six England caps and qualifies via the ability to change countries after a three-year stand-down from international rugby; Will Hurd, the Leicester tight-head, Sale winger Aaron Reed and Edinburgh back three player Harry Patterson.

Their selection indicates, Townsend does not have much faith in the back-up props in the Edinburgh and Glasgow squads, while the lack of younger, home-grown players, other than Paterson, plus the fact only 18 of the squad, less than half, came through domestic Scottish rugby, indicates just how unfit for purpose the SRU's player development pathway is.

Glasgow provide 15 players to the squad, Edinburgh 13, while a further 11 play outside Scotland. The absence of British and Irish Lions Chris Harris and Hamish Watson from the squad might indicate their Scotland career is over, while there is surely some significance in the fact, Toony has not named a Captain when announcing his squad, a change of on-field leadership coiming perhaps.

I CHANCED upon a Facebook post this week, in which Tom Foley, the over-promoted TMO who did much to mess-up the Rugby World Cup Final basically says the problem with the game isn't TMOs. Of course to a degree, he is right; we need a total overhaul of the Laws, including how much influence the man in the TV production truck has. Howver, under the current regime in Dublin, I fear I will be covering games for the Hereafter Times, long before the necessary changes are made.

But, where I am shoulder to shoulder with Foley is when he says, ball-in-play time is too low. He pointed out that in some of the games at the World Cup, the ball was in-play for only 30 or so of the requisite 80 minutes. When you think how much it costs to actually be in the ground for an international, or even a top-level professional game, this is ridiculously poor value for money.

I have long said, the answer is to do what they do in the major North American team sports, such as American Football, Basketball or Ice Hockey. Here In-play time is King, when the action stops, so does the clock.

OK, I accept, with ball-in-play time (hereafter bipt) we would need to reduce actual game length, perhaps to one hour bipt, otherwise, we'd be there all day and half the night. We would also require to appoint official time-keepers, and, certainly at the upper levels of the game – although we could probably get away with staying with 80 minutes at grass-roots level – we would need a clearly-visible game clock, to keep the spectators abreast of how long there was to go.

There might also be a case, if we go to bipt, for more-stringent enforcement of the currently over-looked laws, such as the requirement to put the ball into the scrum within 30 seconds of it being awarded (Law 19 – 4).

[In ice hockey, for instance, there is a penalty for “delaying the game”, which does what it says on the tin – there's one to bring into Rugby Union to speed things up.]

Just suppose, in addition to having an official time-keeper, we have a second stop -watch holder; they have them in boxing - where one guy does nothing but count the time a guy spends on the floor when knocked down; whose job is to monitor the time play is stopped. Tell the teams, they've got 20 or 30 seconds to get the ball into the scrum or line out, and have a guy monitoring this. After all, this concept is already in use for place kicks. Let's get the players moving.. This second counter of seconds, could also earn his or her corn by ensuring the bouts of box-kicking “tennis” began within five seconds of the referee saying: “Use it”.

THAT ENGLAND waives the rules, when it suits them, is a well-established fact of sporting life – we Scots still remember the hugely-different punishments handed-out to oor John Jeffrey and their Dean Richards over The Calcutta Plate fiasco, all those years ago.

But,I just wonder how Twickenham will get round the bother awaiting Bath's Alife Barbeary, following his double yellow cards on Sunday. Steve Borthwick clearly wants Barbeary in his Six Nations squad, but, he's looking at a possible six week ban – reduced of course when he attends “Tackle School”.

Just another problem for the Old Farts to get their heads round.

FINALLY – in my last post, I mentioned Finn Russell's thumping tackle on Cameron Woki, during Sunday's Bath v Racing 92 match. In a post-match interview with David Barnes of The Offside Line, Finn revealed he and Woki had dinner on Sunday night, after the game.

That's where Rugby Union is different, I cannot imagine say a Manchester United player and a Liverpool opponent dining together after such a crunching tackle in a football match.

I also liked Woki's comment at the time; according to Finn he said: “I see you have learned how to tackle now.”