Morris making system work at Scottish

LONDON Scottish director of rugby Dave Morris is confident there’s more to come from his mixture of professionals and amateurs.

Scottish earned their first Championship win last weekend over Cornish Pirates after an eight-game losing streak since their opening day victory over Yorkshire Carnegie.

After 23 new arrivals in the players, Morris must contend with having only half of his 39-man squad full-time, the rest part-time.

The ex-Loughborough Students coach said: “We try to physically prepare the full-timers during the day, make them better rugby players, then ensure we are connected as a team when the part-timers come in during the evening.

“In a high performance structure it is less than optimal but we try to understand our constraints and it’s about how you can get that high performance within the system you have.

“We have a lot of great people and contacts within the club and we’ve helped players transfer into their second career whilst playing. You see them grow as people and I believe those experiences makes them even more effective on the pitch.”

Morris’ coaching team consists entirely of playercoaches with fly-half Jake Sharp looking after attack, hooker Dan George covering set-piece and lock Jonathan Mills working with the forwards.

Former Blackheath hooker Morris added: “They are hard-working but I have to get it right allowing them to switch off from coaching to be a player and vise-versa.

“It’s the first time for them and for me working with player-coaches; we’ve learnt a lot along the way, I’m proud of how they’re applying themselves and we’re keen to make it work.

Despite the club sitting 11th in the table, Morris is upbeat: “For me this isn’t a job, it’s a passion and we are all extremely lucky to be involved with rugby. When you lose, it’s tough and it hurts, but you need to swing that round quickly and its important we treat each other right to get our confidence back.”