Let us see a snarling team erase all doubts

REDEMPTION Day is nearly upon us! Tomorrow has to be the day that faith is restored in this Scotland team so that last Saturday can be put down as a blip. A painful blip but a blip nonetheless.

There has been a lot of grumbling this week about false dawns and over-confidence and I want to see a desperation in the performance to refute these claims and allegations.

The second the players reached the changing rooms after last weekend’s final whistle in Cardiff, they will have started thinking about righting the wrongs and getting back out there. When you fall off the bike, it’s best to get right back on it before any more doubt comes into your head.

There are a lot of doubts circling about this team; they can only play at Murrayfield, have only one way of playing the game, are not physical enough for Six Nations rugby. Pretty strong accusations and ones that John Barclay, Jonny Gray and Hamish Watson will be keen to put to bed tomorrow.

I hope they have taken things personally. International rugby is about making sure you are ready both physically and mentally to do what you need to do within the team structure and to allow the team tactics to be transferred from the training ground to the match.

Too many players were found wanting last week. Too many were simply waiting for it all to click and fall into place.

I’ve always advocated looking forward rather than back. Learn from what has just happened and move on to the next job or the next game.

In this case, I hope the squad have pored over the video nasty and watched it over and over again to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

I hope they’ve been very open and honest about what they should have done in any number of situations. I hope the leadership group that will have included Barclay, Gray, Ali Price and Finn Russell watched it together to see how badly they got it wrong and what they should have done instead.

When the game plan clearly wasn’t working, why didn’t one of this group say: ‘Okay Plan A is not working, let’s move to Plan B’?

When we were losing the physical battle, who should have said: ‘Right lads, we’re getting blown away, we need to take things to a new level of physicality’?

Individual and collective responsibility were not in evidence and we got the scoreline the performance deserved.

Changes have been made to address a lot of these points. Simon Berghan, Grant Gilchrist and Ryan Wilson have been brought in to give the pack some size and bite. They will have been told to impose themselves physically on the game and lay the foundation for others to follow.

Wilson is a leader of men; he plays in a way that encourages others to follow. He brought a directness to Scotland’s attack that was missing for most of the match in Cardiff and resulted in our solitary try.

Behind the scrum, Sean Maitland returns for the injured Byron McGuigan, a change that might have happened anyway.

But it’s at 9 and 12 that the significant changes have been made. Price has become the personification of how Townsend wants the game to be played. At high pace, high tempo.

When it’s done well, it puts huge pressure on the scrum-half in terms of fitness and decision making. The pace of last week’s game, at times, was too much for Price and his decision-making suffered as a result. It was physical and mental fatigue that resulted in him throwing the interception for Wales’ first try.

Greig Laidlaw is a very different player to Price, so the tactics will change. But he has been brought back in for his leadership and game management.

With Pete Horne in at 12, there are now a couple of old heads, who are tactically astute either side of Russell. They will allow him to play but reel him in when necessary. It also means Huw Jones can move back to outside centre, a position in which he looks much more comfortable.

France will pose a severe physical test and will still be smarting from losing in the way they did to Ireland last week.

They showed they can score from anywhere but this is all about Scotland for me. This is all about attitude.

I want to see a snarling, angry, determined team come out and show everyone they can hit the physical levels required to win in the Six Nations and play with variety, combining directness with ambition and flair.

Murrayfield was rocking in November. I want it to be snarling and angry first. Then it can be rocking when Scotland get their campaign back on track.