PRIMED TIME
Cummings says Scots are good to go after month sidelined
SCOTT CUMMINGS insists Scotland won’t be caught cold in Sunday’s Six Nations showdown – despite being out of action for the last month.
While Ireland enjoyed a confidenceboosting 48-10 win over Italy a fortnight ago, Gregor Townsend’s troops were stuck at home twiddling their thumbs following a Covid outbreak in the French camp.
That meant four long weeks stewing over a frustrating one-point loss to Wales at Murrayfield.
But Cummings is adamant the Dark Blues have reacted positively and will come out all guns blazing in two days’ time.
The 24-year-old said: “It has given us an extra couple of weeks to focus on different parts of our game, wee things we can tweak.
“I haven’t played since the Wales game but there has been a lot of pretty tough training here. We’ve pushed ourselves and it has been managed well.
“There are certain times we’ll go full contact and certain times we’ll ease off.
“We’ve trained that extra week, so we can add a couple of new things to our game. It’s given us more time to prep.
“We all still feel good, we are training a lot and feel pretty fit. We’re ready to go.”
Head coach Toony will name his team for the Murrayfield clash at lunchtime today, with Cummings expected to retain his place in the second row alongside Jonny
Gray. And the Glasgow Warriors stalwart believes the national team have the best chance to pick up a win against Ireland since he made his debut in 2019.
Cummings, who has racked up 19 caps, said: “We’ve changed a lot of things over the past couple of years.
“I always talk about us becoming tough to beat and we’re working on that.
“You look at results in the Six Nations so far and we achieved that win against England. Then, against Wales, we didn’t quite get over the line but it was close.
“We know it’s going to be a massive game against Ireland.
“They’re always a great team and they probably haven’t changed that much.
“They have a lot of the same sort of players they have played with for the past five or six years at least, so we know what they’ll bring.”
Cummings also believes his team will take confidence from their historic opening weekend win over England, Scotland’s first at Twickenham in 38 years, and even their loss to Wayne Pivac’s Welsh.
He said: “Going into this match, the way that we dealt with some of the things that England were doing is our starting point.
“We were strong in a lot of those set-piece areas and continued that against Wales when we were really good in the lineout. There were some really good scrum battles.”