None of the three casualties from Saturday’s restorative 17-14 victory over France will make the flight to Tbilisi for Scotland’s penultimate World Cup warm-up game against Georgia, believes head coach Gregor Townsend, with Sam Skinner looking the most concerning of the trio.
Blade Thomson and Tommy Seymour both failed Head Injury Assessments and even with swift recoveries are unlikely to be ready on Wednesday morning for a six-hour flight, said Townsend.
Even the best case scenario for Skinner, who was on crutches after the game and was being scanned on a hamstring injury yesterday, has the versatile forward who can play lock or back row not travelling. The worst case scenario could have him missing the tournament next month altogether.
“We need to have a team out there that is fully fit, with the travel and the quick turnaround,” said Townsend. “There are a couple of players, who weren’t involved today, who we will have to be sure of by Monday if they’re going to be involved in Georgia.”
This was not only because the Scots are travelling earlier than originally planned – perhaps a reaction to flying in to Nice just the afternoon before last week – but because the physical Georgia team require Scotland’s full attention.
“Georgia are a really good team, they want to get into the Six Nations, and this is a huge game for them,” he said. “This is their first visit from a Tier One team, there will be a 50,000 crowd and a hostile atmosphere. We’re obviously going to play them here as well and that will be a difficult enough match.
“Their age-group system is really good now, their Under-20s team have shown that, and they’re preparing for a World Cup.
“So play them in Tbilisi, in their national stadium, is one of the biggest challenges we’ll get. And we can’t wait to see our players get stuck in.”
Townsend wasn’t entirely satisfied with Saturday’s performance, but he was delighted with the way Scotland turned around a difficult situation to get the result.
“I wouldn’t know where to rank in terms of performance,” he admitted. “It wasn’t perfect – clearly not – but what I found really satisfying was how the players found a way to win.
“Against that early scoreboard, against a team that had beaten them comfortably a week ago, against multiple changes in rhythm with a lot of stoppages and the injuries – having to put John Barclay and Ryan Wilson in the second-row, and George Turner at flanker – what the players did today was excellent.
“But we know that our performance will have to improve a lot over the next few weeks.”
The display “clarified a few things” about the final squad of 31 – nine players will be cut in 10 days’ time, he added.
“Players performed well this week,” he said. “Now, whether they were going to be closer to going on the plane or not, we’ll see.
“In the first two games, we’ve used 30 different players, but that’s what we set out to do. We picked two balanced teams, didn’t play as well in the first game as we could have, played better in the second game.
“Now we’re going to give players opportunities, the players who deserved them, or who are coming back from injury and we want to see them again.”
