SIX NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP
Richie Gray admits his refusal to look any further than a meeting with the French is down to bitter lessons from the past.
The Scotland lock concedes a national trait of failing to live up to billing is in the back of his mind when it comes to addressing his side’s chances of beating Les Bleus.
It’s another dangerous scenario for Gregor Townsend’s team, with two opening Six Nations wins for the first time having opened the door to huge expectancy in Paris.
Gray let out a laugh when asked whether he’d dare to dream that success today would be the platform for what would become a title decider against Ireland in a fortnight.
“No,” he said. “We have all been involved in Scottish sport for a long time, so let’s just take it one game at a time.
“It’s a big game, we look forward to it and everybody at home is looking forward to it.
“We know how big the game is but there is a danger of hyping it up too much, potentially, and playing within ourselves.
“We’ve learnt lessons from the past. You get that up and down – win one week, a bit flat the next week and you don’t get the result. We’ve learnt lessons from that.
“I know we say it every year but we do have a very talented group of players and we are just looking to realise our potential.
“The biggest frustration would be not playing to our potential.
“We know it is a big occasion in terms of the Championship.
“But we are looking to play with smiles on our faces and try to play to our potential.
“We are going up against a very good French side that is second in the world at the moment and won the tournament last year.
“Yeah, we’ve certainly got an internal belief but it’s always been there in the last couple of years.
“Thankfully that’s been able to transfer on to the pitch, certainly in the first couple of games. But this is a massive challenge.”
The Glasgow Warriors stalwart points to the solidarity in this squad as one of the major reasons why performances have been backed up, rather than one step forward and a huge step back.
He said: “Credit to the coaches and the players, the environment created has been outstanding. I can’t speak highly enough of that.
“If we take the England game, for example. Don’t get me wrong, when you win games at Testmatch level you enjoy yourselves, so we had a good time together in the changing room and enjoyed each other’s company.
“But an hour after that it was, ‘Right, we’ve got a game against Wales’. The coaching staff and management said, ‘Right guys, well done’ but then we had a pretty hard week going into Wales.
“The non-23 – the ‘Mavs’ – gave us a real tough test and we knew we had to buck up our ideas going into the Wales game because of that tough time in training.
“The environment – coaches, management, non 23 – everyone is pulling in the right direction and pushing each other further.”
There’s the hurdle of Les Bleus hosting a first home game, with the bulk of an 80,000 full house behind them.
Gray added: “It will be massive for them, an enormous drive and it will spur them on. It will give them a huge sense of belief, like it does for us when we’re at home.
“In those tough moments the crowd plays a huge part.”
Scotland will once again look to an explosive attack to carry their threat and the 33- yearold predicts a “very hard and attritional game up front”.
Gray said:
“If we get the upper hand, we know we have the backline that can cause some dam age. It will all start up front.”