Hastings graduates from understudy to leading man with composed display to leave Russell in cold
In years to come, when Adam Hastings looks back on his career, the past fortnight may turn out to be one of the defining moments. It will certainly be among the most fraught. Two weeks ago he was cast in the pressure-free role of understudy; on Saturday, in the cauldron of the Aviva Stadium, he transformed into the leading man.
When a disgruntled Finn Russell walked out on Scotland, the widespread perception was that Scotland had lost their one indispensable player. The message was not lost on Hastings, who was so fearful of the reaction to his selection that he deleted his Twitter account to shut out the trolls and naysayers.
“There’s always a focus on the 10, so the attention was nothing new,” he said. “It was more the keyboard warriors coming out. I just came off social media so I didn’t have to read any of it.
“I thought it would all kick off after the whole thing with Finn. When I was younger I would have read it and allowed it to get into my head. But I might download it tonight and have a wee read.”
If Hastings did indeed download Twitter, the 23-year-old would have liked what he saw. The verdict of his coach, team-mates and Scotland fans on his Six Nations debut was unanimous: the fly-half looked as if he was born to play at this level.
He was helped by a sensible opening strategy, in which Scotland kept possession for most of the first quarter.
“As a 10 you want front-foot ball, and in the first 20 minutes we took the game to them,” he said. “Their try was disappointing but we were on top and cutting them apart, so it was disappointing not to get our hands on the ball a bit more in the second half.”
Hastings was assured and controlled. Save for a couple of high tackles and one missed penalty, his display was highly encouraging.
But with selection for Saturday’s Calcutta Cup at Murrayfield looming, will Hastings start against England? The elephant in the room is the possibility that Russell may
heal the rift with Gregor Townsend. That seems unlikely, but Hastings has no beef with his former mentor, who got in touch before the Ireland game to wish him luck.
“Finn is a class bloke,” said Hastings. “He’s been brilliant ever since I arrived at Glasgow and been a good friend. It was really nice of him to text me and it helped make me feel comfortable. He’s fully Scottish and he wanted to play for Scotland, which he has done very well. He was wishing us all the best so there is no bad blood at all.”
Whether Townsend shares those sentiments is questionable, given that Russell’s actions were a direct challenge to his authority. After the match, Townsend praised Hastings and underlined the role of team cohesion in a trying week. “Adam made good decisions about when to attack, his passing was excellent and he defended well,” said Townsend. “He was a running threat and mixed up his passing game.”
On Russell’s chance of a return against England, the Scotland coach hedged his bets.
“We’ll see, but we’ve had two weeks of training, and cohesion was very important in our selection,” he said. “Players who missed two or three days training did not get selected because of that. For anybody who has missed the last two weeks it will be difficult to get into a squad.”
Those lines are not difficult to read between.
4 Stuart Hogg has become the fourth player to beat more than 100 defenders in the Six Nations, along with Brian O’driscoll, George North and Rob Kearney