Well, Gregor Townsend can’t be accused of the Einstein theory in selection at least.
The Scotland head coach has not picked a similar team expecting the different results for his team to start the Guinness Six Nations against Ireland in Dublin on Saturday. Two-thirds of the team have been dropped, retired, are injured or have stormed off in the huff since the Scots last played Ireland, in Yokohama in the World Cup back in September, and got thoroughly and anti-climatically hammered.
Just five players – Stuart Hogg, Sean Maitland, Sam Johnson, Jonny Gray and Hamish Watson, who didn’t last the first half – are retained from the starting team that sodden and dispiriting night. Ireland, in contrast, have changed just two, and one of those was enforced by the retirement of Rory Best.
Townsend made the obvious changes – Adam Hastings for Finn Russell, which wouldn’t have happened but for the hotel nightcap last week, Fraser Brown for Stuart McInally, Zander Fagerson for WP Nel, Jamie Ritchie for John Barclay.
But he threw in a good few less obvious – a recall for Huw Jones, Scott Cummings instead of the stalwart fixture Grant Gilchrist, and most notably, the inclusion of Australian-born Nick Haining at No 8 and Rory Sutherland at the problem spot of loosehead.
The Edinburgh duo of the uncapped Haining and Sutherland, who has just three caps, all three of them won four years ago, have barely 12 appearance for Edinburgh between them this season.
“We know the performance in Yokohama wasn’t anywhere near good enough but this is a new team,” said Townsend, before quickly adding “the players are looking forward rather than back.”
That seems to be another coded reference to the Russell affair, which he otherwise refused to discuss further.
“I think we covered that last week. I’m talking about the team and the squad that is going to Dublin now,” he said when asked of the mood of the Finn-less squad.
But he was very keen to point out the mood of the squad was buoyant after a few days spent with the sun on their backs at the camp in Alicante.
“I think they’ve been really together as a group for the past two weeks,” he said. “They’ve come in with enthusiasm, energy, open minds. We have a couple of new coaches with new ideas in our group and they have fitted in really well.”
Unlike someone whose name may not be uttered, one might add, but Townsend conceded he’d felt exactly like this prior to the last meeting with Ireland in Japan only to have the team appear listless in the warm-up and equally bad in the game.
“It’s difficult to say,” he said when asked about it. “For whatever reason we just didn’t get things right before the game in the warm-up and in that first 10 to 20 minutes in the game, those were areas we didn’t do as well as we could.
“Just now, the mood of the players in the camp is good. We had a tough session this morning, the players were leading in the meetings and on the training field, and that’s what you want from a coaching perspective.
“We’ve done the detail. There is a bit of a hard edge around defence and the players are the ones doing the talking.
“The game is to come so it’s now up to us all, but especially the players, to ensure we are ready for a huge challenge – that we are confident and ready to work very hard for 80 minutes.”
New cap Haining has just eight appearances since coming to Edinburgh from Bristol in the summer, but benefits from injuries to Blade Thomson and Magnus Bradbury. Sutherland has played a coupel of European games well for Edinburgh against Wasps and Bordeaux, but has been easing himself back after a nightmare 2018 and 2019 with injury,
“In the games he has played he has stood up to whatever has been in front of him,” added Townsend. “He did that in the scrum out in Bordeaux and he had an excellent game down at Wasps. That stuck out in our minds.
“The feedback from Edinburgh has been good. Sometimes players don’t get a huge amount of opportunity at their clubs but if they play well when they get the opportunity and what you hear and see from the training is positive then you feel it is their time, they are opportunity to go out and grab.”
For Jones, who was left out of the Japan trip but has looked back to his best in recent games for Glasgow after getting a consistent run in the team maybe for the first time in his two years there.
“He is playing with real confidence in defence and attack, I know from the feedback at Glasgow how well he has been training and also contributing to meetings, and we’ve seen that here over the past two weeks,” said Townsend.
“Sometimes players have to go through adversity at times in their careers. It has been great to see the character of Huw to get through that and be back enjoying his rugby again.”
Hastings was the obvious choice for 10, having shown strong form for Glasgow in the last two months and being as much like-for-like to Russell as is available – although more likely to play to orders.
He also kicks goals well, a necessity with Greig Laidlaw’s retiral potentially ending the run of sure-thing placekickers which has been Scotland’s only consistent excellence in 21st century rugby.
Better than his Dad? “If you do your work on the stats there’s only one clear winner there,” said Townsend, a team-mate of Gavin’s.
Scotland team: Stuart Hogg (Exeter Chiefs, capt); Sean Maitland (Saracens), Huw Jones, Sam Johnson (both Glasgow Warriors), Blair Kinghorn (Edinburgh); Adam Hastings, Ali Price (both Glasgow Warriors); Rory Sutherland (Edinburgh), Fraser Brown, Zander Fagerson; Scott Cummings, Jonny Gray (all Glasgow Warriors) ; Jamie Ritchie, Hamish Watson, Nick Haining (all Edinburgh).
Replacements: Stuart McInally (Edinburgh), Allan Dell (London Irish), Simon Berghan, Ben Toolis (both Edinburgh), Cornell du Preez (Worcester Warriors), George Horne (Glasgow Warriors), Rory Hutchinson (Northampton), Chris Harris (Gloucester).
