Gilchrist to fulfil his Scotland potential
When Vern Cotter took over as Scotland coach in 2014, one of the first things he did was to name Grant Gilchrist as his captain for that year’s autumn internationals. “You only have to meet him and talk to him to understand that he is a leader,” said Cotter of Gilchrist, who had captained Scotland against Argentina that summer. “People follow him. Even if he is only 24, he was born a leader.”
Things did not work out, though. The second row broke his arm against Lyon, and complications meant that he missed the rest of the 2014-15 season. As recently as this summer, he failed to make the Scotland squad for their southern hemisphere tour. It has, he says, taken almost three years to get back to where he was in the summer of 2014, but after being unexpectedly elevated to the starting XV to face Australia tomorrow at the expense of team-mate Ben Toolis, Gilchrist feels he is finally in a position to fulfil the raw potential Cotter saw.
“Over the last two seasons, I’ve just gradually been getting back to
Long road back: Grant Gilchrist has spent almost three years working to rediscover form my best and I think I am playing as good rugby as I’ve ever played regardless of injuries,” he said. “You have a couple of years when you don’t play a lot but you assume you’ll go back to what you were straight away, and the one thing I learned is that you don’t. I put too much pressure on myself to be the player that I was, rather than just concentrating on getting back to match sharpness.”
Playing under Richard Cockerill at Edinburgh this season has been key to Gilchrist’s resurgence. The Myreside club have won five of their eight Pro14 matches and are unbeaten in the European Challenge Cup, with Cockerill’s influence being most obvious up front.
“Obviously Richard is a top-class coach and has been a forwards coach, so there’s a lot to learn from him,” said Gilchrist. “The way we have been playing has allowed me to develop a lot more. In every game I’ve played, I feel I have played better this season.”
It seems that Gregor Townsend agrees, the Scotland head coach lauding Gilchrist in particular for his defensive work for Edinburgh and for the impact he made during the final 20 minutes of Scotland’s defeat by New Zealand.
“We’ve spoken all week about the energy and intensity [against New Zealand], about how that’s got to be our standard,” said Gilchrist. “At home at Murrayfield the atmosphere will be incredible, and the minimum requirement is a massive amount of energy from the entire 23. If we go in with the energy skyhigh then that is the minimum that will allow us to compete with a team like Australia.
“I’m pretty sure that they will be ready for what we are going to bring, so we have to execute better than we have ever done before. There can be no complacency.”
Given Gilchrist’s track record of disappointment and adversity, the one thing that you can be sure of is that he will not be resting on his laurels just assuming it will be all right on the night.