Captain lays down law to end away day Bleus
PROUD as he should be of his record number of appearances as Scotland captain, the down-side is that Greig Laidlaw has had to try to explain his team’s away-day failings more often than any other individual – to the point where he has told his teammates he is fed up of it. The scrum-half has led the national team on 36 occasions, 11 more than previous record-holder David Sole, but post-match celebrations away from Edinburgh have been all too rare during that time, particularly in the Six Nations Championships in which just seven away wins have been registered in 48 attempts, six of those in Rome. And that is a trend Laidlaw is keen to reverse, starting with today’s trip to the Stade de France. “I feel we’re playing good enough rugby to win – and I’ve pushed that point home this week,” said the 33-year-old ahead of today’s match against France. “We’re sick of talking about having opportunities to win and being confident before games. It’s up to us now, as a group, as a collective, to take the step and win away from home. That’s it.” With a World Cup looming, there has been much talk about Scotland’s capacity to compete, just as there was four years ago, but when removed from home comforts, they failed against the leading nations then and have, a solitary success against a struggling Australian side apart, continued to do so in the interim. In stressing the need for actions to out-weigh words, then, Laidlaw seemed to accept that today’s match represents by far the better of this year’s opportunities, given the way the teams have begun this tournament. “We do [need a big result], absolutely, there’s no getting away from that. We’ve spoken about the likes of Wales coming away winning here. They can produce it on the day, so it’s important for ourselves as a group to make sure we can deliver away from home,” he said. “This is the opportunity that comes first. We’ve not talked about England at all yet. They’re obviously playing extremely well so far, but this is the next opportunity and that’s all we concentrate on.” With the meeting of Wales and England, the two unbeaten sides, taking place immediately after events in Paris and with Scotland still to meet both of them, this match is pivotal in terms of the campaign, as the captain acknowledged. “If we’ve got aspirations to go on and win it this is a very important game, clearly,” said Laidlaw. “We spoke a bit about that and we understand the magnitude of the game. I think that’s good for us to play in games like that as well and I’m really excited to play away from home tomorrow and see what we’re all about.” Laidlaw is aware, too, that the rarity of victories in Paris makes this a one-off opportunity in its own right for these players to claim a place in Scottish rugby lore. Relatively few of his team-mates are old enough to remember as much about Scotland’s only victory at this venue in 1999 as Laidlaw, who had just entered his teens at the time. “My mum and dad were out here watching the game. I was back home because I would just get in the way, so I watched it at my granny and papa’s,” he said, laughing. “I remember us winning the game obviously, which was tremendous, and the celebrations after the game. That was a tremendous time for that team and it’s something we want to have within our team is a big away win.” As for the match which made the name of the current Scotland coach, when his “Toony flip” sent Gavin Hastings’ father clear to score the late try that secured victory, half a dozen members of this squad – Hastings’ son Adam included – had not even been born at the time. “Obviously that was a big game for Gregor [Townsend] back then, in the Parc des Princes was it? I’m pretty sure they were playing with the brown ball back in those days as well, showing Gregor’s age,” Laidlaw quipped. “But Scotland teams that have come away here and won have performed extremely well on the day and we’re going to need to do that tomorrow to win the game. France have got a lot of excellent players and if they get it right they’re dangerous, so we want to make it as difficult for them tomorrow as we can to make sure we get it right and not them.” THE second lowest ranked of the teams involved in the Six Nations could not have offered a more stereotypical demonstration of French unpredictability than when they last played at the Stade de France. Beginning their campaign against Wales, the French tore to the world No.3 nation to shreds for half the match, then allowed them to make the biggest comeback in championship history. In the wake of that result it emerged that a senior player, the one who threw the intercepted pass that handed the Welsh their winning try, had been given the captaincy, but he claimed he did not know that was the case. Since then, a heavy defeat to England resulted in disarray as the half-backs criticised the coaching they were receiving and were duly dropped for this weekend’s match. Now much of their fate lies in the hands of a teenager and his 22-yearold half-back partner. The visitors must, at the very least, ask repeated questions of the combination of stand-off Romain Ntamack and Antoine Dupont on their first Test outing together. The France-based Laidlaw admitted to the combination being new to him and while rightly wary, he made it clear that the pair face an examination. “I think the fact they play together for Toulouse will help them. They are dangerous so we’ll need to defend very smartly tomorrow,” he said. “They are two excellent players. They probably played a bit more together when they were younger [but] we want to put massive pressure on them tomorrow and see how they come out the other side of that. “Sometimes France change things up and they’ve chosen to do that this week. It’s up to us to combat that and try to find an access into the game, whether that be by putting pressure on them or somewhere else in the team.”