Russell ready to return for Scots
fallout,’ he continued. ‘It was blown out of proportion a little, which can happen. It’s not a massive disagreement. It wasn’t like me saying: “I am not going to play for you again”.
‘We’ve been talking like you would speak to anybody. We have been speaking over the last couple of weeks, which has been good.
‘I suppose it is a bit different because we had never spoken much before. It was kind of like, you come into camp, you have one meeting, you go to it and then go into camp.
‘It has been fine. The stuff in the Six Nations is done now. I am not looking back on that much. It is how we can do better than before? How we can get better as a team? How can our relationship grow moving forward?’
Russell said the plan was for him to play for Scotland at the earliest opportunity, which he hoped would be on the three-match summer tour in July.
Although that is looking increasingly unlikely because of the coronavirus, he has talked with Townsend about returning for the two Test series against world champions South Africa and the one-off Test against the All Blacks in New Zealand.
‘Returning then was the plan,’ he said. ‘When I spoke to Gregor before the France game, it wasn’t the right time to come back in. We spoke about the tour to South Africa and New Zealand.
‘We can build the relationship up as best we can and, hopefully, it will be better than ever, then we can get going in the summer. That is the plan, or my plan at least, to get back by then.’
FINN RUSSELL has raised hopes he will play for Scotland again after revealing he was now ‘on the same page’ as head coach Gregor Townsend following their very public fallout.
The Racing 92 fly-half missed his country’s four Six Nations matches after he was dropped prior to the opener against Ireland on February 1 due to a breach of team protocols. But after saying last weekend he wanted to ‘fix things’ with Townsend, Russell has now gone further by indicating they appear to have found a solution to their problems.
‘We are both on the same page and working better than it ever has been, which will be good for us,’ he told BT Sport Rugby.
Russell did his best to play down the row, claiming the fallout — which saw the 27-year-old publicly criticise Townsend — was not as bad as it had been painted.
‘It was not a massive