Scott Johnson thinks Geoff Cross is “right up my alley” as a person and has no doubts about pulling the thoughtful Edinburgh prop into the Scotland team as the only change for the third match of the RBS Six Nations against Ireland.
Cross deputises for Euan Murray, unavailable for the Sunday match because of his religious convictions, in the only alteration to the team that defeated Italy two weeks ago.
Jon Welsh, the Glasgow prop, is in line for his second cap off the bench with Dougie Hall, who missed the Italy match through injury, also restored among the replacements.
The interim head coach insisted that he had “a good look” at the team before letting it go virtually untouched into the third week of the championship, while Cross was selected on his scrummaging prowess.
“We did take a lot of time with this decision,” he said. “Geoff’s there to make sure our scrum holds, and for that alone.”
Cross’s reputation for polite, good-natured eccentricity has won over Johnson.
“I don’t think I’ve ever coached a kid like him but he’s great company, right up my alley,” he continued.
“I wake up every morning not knowing what to expect from him, and that’s a pleasant surprise.
“As my dad used to say, he’s probably so heavenly we’re trying to find his earthly use. I think we found it as a tight-head prop.”
In turn, Cross feels that Johnson’s attitude to coaching is refreshingly basic.
“The things he asks you to do are almost embarrassingly simple,” said the 30-year-old. “But he asks you to them extraordinarily well, and the best players do that consistently, no matter if they don’t have time, they’re under pressure, they’re tired or in pain.
“It’s the simplicity. Scott can also be a bit of a philo-sopher, but I like that.”
The prop has been down this road many times before, brought in to cover Murray, and the rules are the same.
“It’s up to me to show ‘this is why you should pick me’,” he said. “This is an opportunity for me to do that if I get it right.”
The Scots are at pains to state that Ireland will be a strong as ever, and Johnson does not believe what beat Italy will suffice against Sunday’s visitors.
“It won’t be good enough to beat Ireland,” he said. “They’re a world class defensive unit, so we need to take it up a peg or two.
“Despite the changes they’ll come here buoyant because of their history here as well.”
And the area where the Scots have to improve will be the same from now until the completion of the championship, he added.
“You can write the speech for the next three or four weeks we have to get the tackle area right, the contact is what matters.
“At the moment it’s like episodes of CSI all we left the first week against England was fingerprints, the second week we had eyewitnesses, in the third week we want to be still there when the police arrive.”
Ireland have the best example of a contact area practioner for the Scots to follow, Johnson continued.
“Much is said and written about Brian O’Driscoll as an attacking weapon and he’s been a wonderful rugby player, but what’s not written so much is that he’s so good at the contact area, he’s fantastic,” he added.
“We’ve got to be extremely good at it, a vast improvement on what we did in week two.
“It was an improvement against Italy but not big enough. This goes right through Scottish rugby, we need to get good at this.”