The curious case of Gary Graham

Let us suspend cold, cynical reality for a change and imagine a world where everything is rainbows, bunny rabbits and sunshine and no one ever gets injured playing rugby football. Now we’re here, let’s be a little more dull than we might be and consider the entirety of candidates to play in the back row of the Scotland national team and their places in the firmament.

(Disclaimer: these are personal rankings gained from my own opinion and Gregor Townsend’s more recent selection preferences).

Your first choice back row is John Barclay, Hamish Watson and Ryan Wilson (I know, I know... Wilson is an acquired taste for some but he’s selected as a matter of course and has actually been very good the last two games).

Second choice? Blade Thomson (they like him a lot), Jamie Ritchie (rising the charts like a bullet after last week) and David Denton.

Third choice – Matt Fagerson, Magnus Bradbury and Josh Strauss.

Fourth choice – Robert Harley, Luke Crosbie (Townsend told me at the weekend he was on the fringe of selection before getting injured) and Adam Ashe.

So we have 12 players in the queue before we even get to the celebrated Gary Graham, who has declared himself available for Scotland having been picked in the England squad during the last Six Nations.

Now Gary is not necessarily 13th choice in the back row; we don’t know for sure the chronology of what caused him to change his mind because the coaches won’t tell us and the player has been cosseted away.

He’s probably getting a crash course in media training from the Murrayfield PR department to stop him saying anything as incendiary as he did to the Mail on Sunday last February, when he stated how much he’d like to “shove it in the faces” of the Scots for not previously picking him.

Gary may have jumped the queue, having made his declaration to Townsend in the last week. But we did glean from some vague answers to questions this week that it had been a process weeks in the making.

Still – and remembering he’s an outand-out 6 and not a two position player like Sam Skinner – I definitely don’t see Graham shifting anyone in the top two back rows listed above and probably not the third one either.

That’s just my opinion, obviously. But it seems to be one that’s been shared all the way up the development ranks in Scotland.

Gary’s Dad George did suggest that some public school bias had been responsible for his boy being ignored but, given that he played in the same Under-20 side as Finn Russell, Stuart Hogg and Mark Bennett, none of whom went to private school, that’s unlikely.

What’s changed? Well, we don’t live in that sunny rainbowed world and five of the 12 players I listed at the outset are injured. In addition, Scotland have four Autumn Tests this year and Townsend has already said he doesn’t want to play anyone in all four.

In short, Gary’s call-up has come exactly when it should have, for reasons that are entirely plausible. Perhaps Townsend does rate him higher than 12th in the pecking order, but unless injuries persist I still don’t see him being in the 31 for the Rugby World Cup in Japan.

It’s been a particularly curious kind of affair all the way round. But to me, the most curious part of it was – and remains – just why was Gary selected for England in the first place?

Gary’s callup for Scotland has come exactly when it should have, for reasons that are entirely plausible

If he was, at best, seventh or eighth in the pecking order for Scottish back rows, what did that make him for England, who have 15 registered players and three subs for every rugbyplaying Scot?

England did have a back row injury epidemic and they still do. But Graham was discarded after getting injured during the Six Nations, not picked for the tour of South Africa, and not picked for the Autumn Test squad. Eddie Jones seems to have gone cool on him awfully quickly.

Eddie, who is never anything other than good value in a press conference, remarked this week that England performed “a public service” for the other home nations in developing players.

He also gave his usual “don’t care mate” routine, just like he doesn’t care about refereeing decisions against his team despite going on about them all the time.

But his first remark maybe gives the game away. The RFU have been exceedingly sniffy about their academy players with dual qualifications being spirited away to Cardiff, Dublin and Edinburgh.

Ben Vellacott, the Gloucester scrumhalf, and Cameron Redpath – son of Bryan – of Sale Sharks have both been aggressively courted by England despite having played age-group for Scotland.

Are the RFU and/or Jones targeting Scots simply to make a point about dual qualified players without ever intending to cap them?

It would be appalling if Graham’s selection was either Jones being mischievous or the RFU playing games with players’ international aspirations.

From here, however, it looks the most plausible reason for the whole affair.

Picture: SNS Group. Newcastle’s Gary Graham was called up to the Scotland squad by Gregor Townsend this week.