Problems on the road can be solved on tour
Gilchrist sees summer series as chance to cure travel malaise as Scots have shown at home they are capable of reaching great heights Stuart Bathgate In Canada
What do Scotland want from this short summer tour? Three wins, obviously, starting tonight in the Commonwealth Stadium against Canada. But also, and more importantly in the longer term with the Rugby World Cup in the offing, a solution to the away-day woes from which they have suffered so grievously in recent seasons.
The record defeat at Twickenham in 2017 was the nadir of Vern Cotter’s time in charge, and the problems on the road have persisted to an extent under Gregor Townsend. True, the former stand-off began his tenure this time last year with wins against Italy in Singapore and Australia in Sydney, but this year’s Six Nations away outings kicked off with a calamitous display in Wales, continued with an error-strewn showing in Dublin, and ended with a hardfought if barely merited win in Rome. If Scotland were simply a poor side we would have to accept such performances as par for the course.
But, as they showed in the evisceration of Australia in the Autumn Tests and the wins over England and France in the spring, they are capable of reaching pretty exalted heights, both in results and in the style of rugby they play.
So we know they are capable of great things, and that to realise their potential they have to start applying their talent more consistently. In games such as this evening’s, that means shrugging off whatever psychological issues they may have on the road and imposing their superiority from the start, as captain Grant Gilchrist acknowledged.
“We have to make sure we handle our business properly,” the Edinburgh lock said. “The first 20 minutes away from home is something we have to improve on, full stop. This tour is a great opportunity to address that: a chance to play our brand of rugby that we’ve seen work well at Murrayfield and maybe not away from home.
“We need to be more consistent away from home. That’s one of the main goals of the tour – to improve our consistency over three games away from Murrayfield. It doesn’t just happen for us at Murrayfield, we still have to work, but the majority of our best performances have been at home with the crowd there. We seem to click a lot easier. That’s one of the challenges: three games in a climate we’re not used to.”
A significant factor here, of course, is that by and large this Scotland line-up is not the one that has underperformed elsewhere.
Of the side that began the 34-7 defeat by Wales in February, for example, only three – Chris Harris, Byron Mcguigan and Ben Toolis – start against Canada. Out of the starting line-up from the last match, that two-point win in Rome, there is only one survivor: hooker Fraser Brown, who might well only be playing because of the injury to tour captain Stuart Mcinally.
So this is a very inexperienced Scotland side: one that should not be burdened by past failings, but one that cannotdrawinspirationfrompast glories either. Jamie Ritchie and James Lang make their debuts at openside and centre respectively, and Adam Hastings and Lewis Carmichael should win their first caps off the bench. The onus is on them to get up to speed right away, but Gilchrist insisted that the rookies were mature enough to slot straight in at this level.
“Guys like Magnus [Bradbury] could have been Edinburgh captain, minus the incident,” he said, referring to the lapse of discipline after which the back-row forward was stripped of the captaincy by club coach Richard Cockerill. “I was right behind him as a great choice to captain Edinburgh; I think he will be in the future. “Jamie Ritchie could captain Edinburgh, could captain Scotland. These guys have got great leadership.
“They’re young, but they’re not young when they get on the training pitch. They know what they’re doing, they speak