Gregor Townsend’s three words to sum up the 2023 Guinness Six Nations ran the entire gamut – “emotional, encouraging, frustrating”.
The Scots finished third in the championship with three wins, but that only equals their previous best in Six Nations play.
The win at Twickenham prompted the emotion, the improvement in the team brought encouragement, but the losses to the two best teams in the world, France and Grand Slam champions Ireland, provoked frustration.
‘Saturday was frustrating’
🏆#AsOne pic.twitter.com/2bN8y7O9vl
— Scottish Rugby (@Scotlandteam) March 18, 2023
“Maybe rollercoaster would be a word to use. Sometimes Saturday was frustrating,” he conceded about the 26-14 win over Italy that concluded the championship.
The focus now switches to the World Cup in September and October and a training camp that begins as early as before the end of May.
And that focus will use lessons from Scotland’s preparation for the 2019 tournament, where they flopped badly in the opener against Ireland.
“‘We’ve learned a lot from that game, and about World Cup prep,” he said. “We believed we were the fittest team going into the tournament, knowing what other fitness test results came back from other countries.
‘“But we maybe could have focused more on our rugby. There’s elements of our defence and attack that we can now spend a lot of time on, as well as getting the players fit. But the key focus will be rugby this time round.”
‘We need to be at our best level’
It doesn’t get any easier, with Scotland’s opening game in Marseille against defending champions South Africa.
“Development in the summer is about getting your World Cup squad ready to take on, and hopefully beat, the top teams,” he said.
“We start against South Africa, the No 3 team in the world. We need to be at our best level for that game.
“We’ve got good warm-up games. We know Italy are a good team, as we’ve seen at the weekend.
“France home and away, the No 2 team in the world. That’ll be a good test for us. Georgia will also give us a real challenge up front.”
It was a younger team against Italy with Stuart Hogg, Richie Gray and Finn Russell absent injured. All are expected to return in weeks rather than months, and long-term injured Adam Hastings, Darcy Graham and Rory Darge will also come into contention.
“On Saturday It was great to see Ollie (Smith) start, Blair (KInghorn) get a game at 10, and Ben Healy get capped. We had Cam Redpath and Ewan Ashman back in the squad as well.
“Those are players who are going to play a big part in our World Cup preparations, but also in the future years.”
Kinghorn has multiple roles
Graham’s return – and his record for Scotland – means that Saturday’s hat-trick hero Blair Kinghorn can’t be guaranteed a place in the team when all are fit, said Townsend.
“Blair would definitely be in the mix,” added the coach. “But Darcy is also going to be in the mix in the back three as well.
“Finn’s obviously playing very well at 10. Really, Blair is pushing more for the back three positions than for 10.
“But I loved the fact he got to play 10 this week. He did well, scored three tries and his goal-kicking was good.
“Even the way Blair came off the bench in previous games, he looks faster and bigger. Whether that’s to do with conditioning, or just confidence to take players on, I don’t know.
“These are massive positives for us. It may be that he finds himself in the starting team, or maybe he’s on the bench. But, either way, I think he’s going to add to our team.”
Conversation