Townsend must fix Scots’ dismal record on the road
Ruptured relations with Russell add to challenge Hastings faces stiff test against veteran Sexton
When a side who find it virtually impossible to lose at home meet one who cannot buy a win on the road, then the odds on an upset are vanishingly thin.
That pretty much sums up the situation today in Dublin, where Ireland have lost only three of their past 31 home games in the last six years, while Scotland have not won at the Aviva Stadium since it was called Lansdowne Road in 1998, although they did squeeze past Ireland at Croke Park in 2010.
Scotland have not won in Wales since 2002, at Twickenham since 1983 or in Paris since Gregor Townsend scored the final try in Scotland’s 36-22 win in 1999.
Even Rome is not exactly a happy hunting ground: Scotland have lost five of their 10 Six Nations games there, and although they have won the past three, one was by a point and in 2018 they needed a very late Greig Laidlaw penalty to snatch a probably undeserved win.
With an away record like that, it is little wonder that the odds on a Scotland win make them almost unbackable. And that was before last week’s episode involving the mercurial Finn Russell, which Scotland have tried to brush off, but which has undoubtedly made their task considerably more daunting. The numbers, when fly-half Russell is absent, paint a stark picture: since his debut in 2014, Scotland have won 47 per cent of their games when Russell has not been playing, but 58 per cent when he has.
There is a desperation among the Scots and their new captain, Stuart Hogg, to overcome their away record in Russell’s absence, and in the process atone for a poor Six Nations and a dire World Cup display.
Yet there is unknown territory here, too, for Ireland to deal with now that they are under the stewardship of Joe Schmidt’s former assistant, Andy Farrell, who has already made several changes and gives a debut to young Leinster No8 Caelan Doris.
As head coach, Farrell is seen as the continuity appointment, yet Scotland believe he will subtly change the way Ireland play.
“Ireland traditionally have been conservative,” said Scotland assistant coach Mike Blair.
“But we anticipate that with Andy Farrell taking over the phaseattack stuff, there will probably be more [rugby] league-style shapes – Saracens-type shapes, or Leinstertype shapes, so their attack will change a bit. They’ll have a bit more variety about their game.”
Yet the one thing Blair does not expect to change is Ireland’s start. Their experienced pack will try to punch up the middle, taking on Scotland’s forwards to see if they break. Throughout 2019, Scotland conceded at least one try in the first 15 minutes against every major side they played, and in Yokohama in the opening game of the World Cup for both sides, Ireland’s pressure on Scotland yielded three unanswered tries in the first 25 minutes.
“I think they’ll take us on and see how we respond to that, much like they did at the World Cup,” said Blair. “It’s crucial to show them that’s not a way they can beat us.”
For Scotland, and in particular coach Gregor Townsend – who is under huge pressure after the World Cup and his catastrophic rupture with Russell – there is also a need to show that the lessons of Japan have been absorbed and the deficiencies remedied.
That need has been reflected in a team showing 10 changes from the team that started against Japan in Scotland’s final World Cup game.
It is a mobile, attacking line-up based on club units, with a Glasgow-dominated front five and an all-edinburgh back row, with both half-backs and both centres from the Warriors.
But Blair acknowledges that a change of personnel is not enough on its own to change fortunes. The one-dimensional tactical approach which prompted the showdown between Townsend and Russell also needs to be addressed, with Blair pledging that Scotland would play a more rounded and less structured game that plays to their traditional strengths.
“It was obvious after the World Cup that something needed to change, that we needed to mix up what we were doing, because what we’d planned for Japan didn’t work,” said Blair. “We had to tweak things: some were selection-based, others style-based or option-sbased. As coaches, we’ve been looking long and hard at ourselves because how we prepared the players in Japan wasn’t good enough, especially in that first game against Ireland.”
Although Scotland have a debutant No8 in Nick Haining, and welcome back prodigal sons Huw Jones and Rory Sutherland, much of the focus will fall on Russell’s replacement at No 10, Adam Hastings, in his first Six Nations start. His club coach, Dave Rennie, reckons that he is already a better player than Russell, while Blair believes with more “time in the saddle” the 23-year-old has the maturity and running game to pose uncomfortable questions for his opponent Johnny Sexton.
Not that the Irish veteran will mind. He has won seven times in a row against Scotland, and for that run to come to an end, it will take more than simply a virtuoso performance from the young pretender.