IMPATIENT HOGG NOW JUST WANTS SCOTLAND’S GAMES TO BEGIN
Hogg in a hurry but having to rein in his excitement as Scots await their big bow
STUART HOGG is j umpy, impatient, desperate to get Scotland’s World Cup underway but he is having to be sensible. He is having to channel his energy in the right direction.
Vern Cotter’s side will not see action until Wednesday, when they take on Japan in Gloucester. From their training base, the Scotland players will monitor the action going on elsewhere, biding their time before they can be part of the party.
Filling the gaps is usually where Hogg comes in. A joke on a teammate here, a cheeky jape there. But even the Scotland full-back is having to watch his step at the side’s Tewkesbury base.
‘This is my first World Cup and, as you can probably tell, I’m really excited,’ Hogg admitted. ‘From the pre-season, it was a fairly similar experience to being on the Lions tour. We’ve been to a few different venues f or training and had different ways of getting fit.
‘But now I feel like I’m stepping into the unknown. It’s my first big tournament and I’m trying to learn off the boys who’ve been to one before.
‘I’m always one of the lads who is fairly hyper around camp, so I’ve been asking the older boys if I’m all right doing this or that. If I’m not, I’ll take a step back and relax a bit.
‘I’m just massively excited. Even sitting here talking, my leg is tapping away daft under the table. I just can’t wait to get out there now.’
Hogg could be made to wait a little longer. An injury picked up in the warm-up win over Italy saw him wearing a protective boot on a damaged ankle when Vern Cotter paraded his World Cup squad.
He is back running freely now but Cotter may decide it best to give the problematic joint a few more days’ rest, rather than risk him against Eddie Jones’ Cherry Blossoms in the Pool B opener.
Losing Hogg’s strike-running capabilities would be a significant blow for Scotland but the player himself is refusing to give up hope of making the Kingsholm clash.
‘I’ve been working with our physio Stephen Mutch and we’re just taking it day by day,’ he said. ‘Hopefully it will come good. I want to play in every single game, so if I’m selected to play against Japan, that’s great. If not, I’ll just continue to work hard and, hopefully, get the starting jersey next time.’
Scotland have won all four of their previous encounters with Japan but that does not mean the current crop are taking next week’s match, or the following fixture with the USA, for granted, with crucial match-ups with South Africa and Samoa lying in wait further down the line.
‘The boring answer is that we’ve not looked any further than Japan,’ said Hogg. ‘We know what they are going to bring. They’ve got big, physical players, speed out wide and it’s going to be a massive test.
‘We can’t just expect that this (a victory) will happen for us. We have to get over that try-line and do well in defence, too.’
Hogg is not the only impatient member of the Scotland squad. Fraser Brown has been waiting years for this moment.
Brown was a bored 22-year- old driving tractors on the family farm near Biggar, wondering whether he would ever play rugby again, when the last World Cup took place.
Working the muck spreader and putting in long hours in the fields when the real action was happening in New Zealand was not what he had wanted to do, but he had no choice.
First his rugby career had been disrupted after a shoulder operation. Then a prolapsed disc in the neck trapped nerves, causing pain down his left arm, which was cured by fusing the neck bones on either side of the damage.
Not surprisingly after that complicated and serious operation, he thought it wise to step away from the game after spells at Edinburgh Rugby and Sale Sharks.
When the 2011 tournament started, he had barely laced his boots in anger for nearly two years and was left on the farm while his parents went to New Zealand to visit family and take in some World Cup matches.
Watching the action from the other side of the world rekindled the passion Brown had for the sport.
He admitted: ‘Watching the last World Cup probably shaped where I am now.
‘At the time I was bored, wasn’t playing and was working on the farm. It could be a pretty lonely existence, so that camaraderie you get with rugby is what I also missed.
‘Up until then, I had been injured for a couple of years and had taken a bit of time out. As a young guy, it can be quite depressing not getting to do the things you want to do, so I had to step away from rugby.
‘You get a bit impatient as a young kid and I had been away from rugby long enough, so I decided to go down and chuck the ball about again.’
There began his remarkable journey back to the pinnacle of Scottish rugby — a journey that could likely lead him to a starting spot against Japan on Wednesday.
‘We have been looking at Japan since the start of the summer,’ said Brown. ‘ They have been our sole focus even through the warm-up games. We play the USA four days later, but you can’t afford to look at that match until Japan is over.’