Scots can end our Welsh woe, declares Watson

Murray saw red in 2006 but believes Townsend is the man to turn the tide

SCOTLAND flanker Hamish Watson insists Gregor Townsend’s men can launch this year’s Six Nations championship bid with a first victory in Wales for 16 years.

The Scots will be marked men, though, after their stunning autumn Test series when they blew Australia away and came within a whisker of upsetting the All Blacks.

And Watson, a crucial linchpin to Townsend’s desire to outrun teams with a fast-paced style of rugby, knows that the old underdog status will be replaced by a more confident psyche.

‘Everyone will have analysed the games from the autumn and will have seen that we like to play a really attacking brand of rugby which has been growing since the last Six Nations,’ said Watson. ‘It showed

SCOTT MURRAY looks out to the Pacific Ocean from a regular stop-off point between work in Malibu and home in Santa Monica, but his mind is on Cardiff. He has just left his construction boss Nathan Jones, who is Welsh as it happens, and is preparing for his daily 20-minute swim in a Californian winter. But it wasn’t the Welsh lilt that set off the butterflies. It was the calendar.

‘It is strange because it is almost exactly ten years since I finished playing for Scotland but I’ve watched every single game since and I still get a funny buzz at the end of January and the build-up to the Six Nations. It’s a special time.’

Murray has some wonderful memories from playing for his country in 87 Tests and representing the British & Irish Lions, and, as Wales appear on Gregor Townsend’s horizon for Saturday’s opening match of 2018, the former second row recalls the worst of all — a red card waved in his face in the red-hot atmosphere of the Millennium Stadium in 2006.

‘The beginning of the end,’ he reflects now. He has a story to tell about that card and his surprising international exit, but we will come back to that. Right now he is heading home from work, ‘real work’, poring over architect’s drawings and building sites, as he reflects on the route that has taken him from Prestonpans to California, via the blood, guts and fine wines of French rugby.

‘It has been an amazing life and I am very lucky to have experienced what I have,’ says the 42-year-old. ‘But there’s no doubt that the rugby was the best days. Playing for Scotland… there is nothing like it in the world.’

Murray was one of the first tranche of British professionals signed by the ambitious Bedford ‘Blues’ in 1996, just months after the sport turned pro. ‘It was really just the fact that someone wanted to pay you to play that was unbelievable for a kid from the Pans,’ Murray recalls. ‘I was very lucky to come along at that time.’

He went on to play for Saracens for four seasons before being persuaded to return to Edinburgh and duly form a formidable presence with Nathan Hines at the heart of a pack inspired by Todd Blackadder in a team that would break Scotland’s European duck by reaching the quarter-finals for the first time, in 2004.

Then came that fateful day in Cardiff, February 12, 2006, when Murray followed Hines into Scotland rugby ignominy by becoming only the second internationalist in Scottish history to be sent off.

‘It’s one of life’s regrets, isn’t it?’ he says now. ‘I don’t have many because I’ve a lot to be thankful for, and I still think it was harsh.

‘Ian Gough (Wales lock) tackled me late, long after the ball was away, and I just pushed my boots back to free myself and get to my feet, and the ref has said I’ve kicked him in the face. Goughy, to be fair, wrote a lovely letter to the disciplinary panel to say it shouldn’t have been a red card.

‘The panel seemed to agree, because while they gave me a three-week ban, which was a bit unusual for kicking someone in the head. They said it would cover just one game. But that happened to be the Calcutta Cup match which we went on to win! And Frank Hadden (Scotland coach) wasn’t the same with me after that. I’d just turned 30 and thought I was in good shape, but…’

Murray did return to the team and would go on to set a new cap record, surpassing Townsend’s 82 caps before bowing out against the All Blacks at the 2007 World Cup. The tournament was hosted by France but that pool match was played at Murrayfield, so it brought the East Lothian boy full circle ten years on from a try-scoring debut against Australia.

‘I didn’t know I was bowing out at the World Cup, to be honest,’ he adds. ‘But I could tell I wasn’t in Frank’s thinking any more as he virtually picked a second side against the All Blacks to save the top team for the final match with Italy and, as I came off the pitch at the end of the game, Frank said: “Thanks for everything you’ve done for Scottish rugby, Scott”. ‘I thought: “Eh? It’s not like I’m retiring”. As he turned his back, I thought: “Oh right, I see, maybe I am”. He called me a few months later to come across and cover for injuries. My French coach wasn’t happy about me going but I went and, as it turned out, I wasn’t needed. Then, when I went back, I was dropped for three weeks! ‘And that was it, the end of my Scotland career. But I had ten great years, amazing times, so while it ended strangely I have no complaints.’ Murray, who is considering a return to full-time coaching — with clubs in the new Major League, to be launched next month, believed to be interested in luring the Scot back into the game — admits that he wished he had taken elements of his career more seriously.

He was always one of the jokers in the team and Scotland’s current head coach is unlikely to ever forget his sponsorship deal with Reebok as a result. The sportswear firm had signs plastered across Edinburgh with the slogan ‘Gregor Townsend wears Reebok’. Or, at least, they started out with that slogan. Once Murray and Martin Leslie got to work with marker pens, bus stops around the capital proclaimed that ‘Gregor Townsend wears Suspenders’ among other things, for many months.

Murray has a lot of time for his former team-mate and is quick to add that Townsend was adept at his own wind-ups.

‘It’s great to see him in charge of the team now,’ he adds, ‘and it’s no surprise to see how they are playing. I think we saw a real change in the standards and performances in the team when Vern Cotter took over, and Gregor has built on that by lifting the standards, and the skills and ambition, in attack.

‘He will remember like I do the days when playing Wales was not something to be worried about. We only lost once to them from 1999 to 2003. But it was always a game to look forward to because we were both teams that liked to attack.

‘I get the same buzz now with guys like Stuart Hogg and Finn Russell. For all the injuries we have, we have players that will cause any team problems. We are going into this with the optimism and confidence we used to ten or 15 years ago.

‘I can’t wait. There’s a bar here called: “Ye Olde King’s Head” and we’ll be there at 7am with locals and a big crop of ex-pats, and my boss Nathan and his Welsh mates. I might not have a job come Monday if the boys do the job. But, hey, I can cope with that.’