Triple crown in November is no fantasy
RETIREMENT from rugby might have come a few years ago for me, but the same excitement I felt as a player creeps into the bones when we hit November.
The simple reason is that from the moment I made my debut for Scotland in 2000 I grew to see this month as the chance where we could make history in Scottish rugby.
Others may see it differently, and of course the Six Nations is incredible, but for a player the game is about winning, and this is when we have a real chance to claim victory against the southern hemisphere’s ‘big three’.
I played against New Zealand five times and never won, Australia five and won once, and the Springboks eight times and won once — though we should have beaten them in 2008, too… the victories came at Murrayfield in November and they were my biggest.
Autumn internationals provide the chance for us to take on the southern hemisphere teams at the end of their season, when our squad is relatively fresh, and they traditionally rest some guys and blood some youngsters.
When we defeated South Africa 21-6 on November 16, 2002, and I only came off the bench late on, it seemed to lift the whole belief in Scottish rugby. It was our first win over a southern hemisphere nation since Andy Irvine’s lot in Brisbane in 1982; first over the Boks since Jim Telfer captained the team to victory at Murrayfield in 1969.
We nearly beat, and probably should have beaten South Africa away for the first time the next summer as we went there full of belief.
The game is all about that and the current squad is in a different place to where we were for most of my career — both as a result of Vern Cotter’s work and the fact that Gregor Townsend has taken over.
We have shown this year that we can beat a full-strength Australia in Australia and beat the Irish and Welsh, and so is it possible to beat New Zealand now? At Murrayfield, I think it is.
It is key not to look beyond Samoa first up, but as I’m no longer playing and having to ‘stay in the moment, not look too far ahead etc’, I’ll come back to them, because the focus of excitement has been the fact that New Zealand are on the horizon and everyone who has probably eaten a Scotch pie knows that we haven’t ever beaten them. I never came close.
My experiences of playing them at Murrayfield tended to be similar: we’d stand off them a bit in the first half, struggling to get the balance right between showing them respect and showing them too much, and then when they’d got a lead we’d come out all guns blazing and discover that they were human and we could pierce them.
This is where I think the British and Irish Lions tour in the summer will benefit our players. It would have benefited us more had Warren Gatland selected the best players for the tour rather than simply the ones he knew best, but we’re past that… aren’t we? The point is we have players like Stuart Hogg, Greig Laidlaw, Tommy Seymour, Finn Russell and Allan Dell who were part of that. Okay, they didn’t end up with a lot of Test time but I know from my Lions time in 2005 that we still learn masses.
Being in the Lions squad you come home realising that the best players in Britain and Ireland are no better than you. They might play in better teams, might be paid a lot more, but in training you discover that there isn’t a big gap between you. So if they are capable of beating New Zealand, then so are we.
Of course, we need our best players fit and playing well to have a chance of beating any of the three teams coming here this month, but though we do have injury problems — loosehead prop is throwing up opportunities currently for youngsters — we also have real strength in depth at second row, back row, scrum-half, the centres and outside backs.
Gregor will have tricks up his sleeve, too, and different plans for each game.
It kicks off with Samoa and, while I enjoyed a three-fromthree record against them, it took a late Marcus di Rollo try to win my last one, in 2005, when I was captain, and there wasn’t a game I came off not covered in Samoan imprints.
I played with Samoans as well and the key is firstly not to underestimate them. They actually look for that and love it when teams disrespect them, because they use it to motivate them.
You look across the best competitions in the world, Super Rugby, Top 14 and the Premiership, and every team has a Samoan, so when you pull them together they can create a near world-class XV.
If you take them on at their own game you’ll be in trouble. Instead, we need to exploit the fact that by Saturday they won’t have had much time together, stick to our gameplan and be strong in the face of an early physical onslaught.
If you can break their will and their power, meet them head-on in contact, you can take away their energy.
Don’t send runners into contact alone, because they look for their big tackles to fuel the team.
Be sharp, defend their steppers well and exploit the gaps.
We will come back to the All Blacks and Australia in the coming weeks and, for all I have said that I am really looking forward to our game with New Zealand, an evening match with fireworks going off across Murrayfield, there is no doubting that they have taken the game to a new level again this year and will be formidable. And the Wallabies have started to catch up. But these are the best days of your career — and for Scots they provide the best opportunities to become heroes.