Scarlets find cutting blade for Scotland

THE Scarlets have put another New Zealander on the road to an alternative international career and an early collision with Wales.

Blade Thomson, imported from the Hurricanes to fill the void left by Tadhg Beirne’s return to Ireland, is being offered the prospect of taking an ancestral route back to Scotland.

A Junior World Cup winner with the Baby Blacks in 2010, the Scarlets’ latest Kiwi is eligible through his Scottish grandparents.

“We have been speaking to Blade and we will be watching his performances with interest,’’ a Scotland source said.

Like Beirne, the Scarlets’ ‘Blade Runner’ is a threein-one forward, a No. 8 who doubles up as a second row and a blindside flanker

where he made his debut for the Scarlets at Bath on Friday. Head coach Wayne Pivac described the result, a 45-12 beating, as ‘a massive wake-up call’ for last season’s Champions’ Cup semi-finalists.

Thomson’s four appearances for the New Zealand Maori does not affect his eligibility for Scotland whose next match is against Wales in Cardiff on November 3. The Scots have already claimed one Welsh back row forward, former Cardiff Blues’ flanker Luke Hamilton from Pembroke who they capped last year on the strength of his Scottish father.

If he lives up to his billing, Thomson will be in serious contention to follow a long line of kilted Kiwis, a trail blazed almost 30 years ago by another New Zealander with Welsh connections, former Pontypool centre Sean Lineen.

Scotland have another reason for what one official at Murrayfield described as ‘keeping the Scarlets on our radar’. Sam HidalgoClyne, their starting scrum-half against Canada last month, will be challenging Wales’ No. 1 Gareth Davies following his transfer from Edinburgh to Parc y Scarlets.

The Scarlets have alreday converted Kiwi Hadleigh Parkes to the Wales midfield.