Darge all too aware of need to step up level to beat French
SCOTLAND have yet to play to their best in this year’s Six Nations but they will almost certainly have to do so against France on Saturday if they are to claim the win they need to get their Championship challenge back on track.
The most significant and encouraging aspect of their victory over England was the fact it was achieved despite Scotland not being at the top of their game. They had the maturity and self-confidence to find a way to win even though they were not in optimal form.
The most disheartening aspect of the loss to Wales which followed the Calcutta Cup triumph was the fact it might so easily have been another victory. Again below their best other than during a first-half purple passage in which they went from 6-0 down to 11-6 up, Scotland still only lost by three points to a team fired up on home soil.
The most concerning thing about the impending game against France? Surely the fact France’s firepower is considerably greater than England’s or Wales’.
That means Scotland will not get away with playing well in parts, or with the lapses in discipline which cost them against the Welsh. Or, as Rory Darge put it, they will need to make every minor incident count if the big picture is going to end up in their favour.
“It was massively disappointing that we lost to Wales,” said the Glasgow openside, who made his long-awaited debut off the bench in Cardiff. “But we’ve still got three huge games left.
“If you try and put it in perspective, we’ve won a really big game against England, then lost another game by a really small margin where we were disappointed with the performance and the result. At this level, it’s about small moments and what impact that can have, the margins that it comes down to. We know what France will bring. Every moment is going to be massively important against them.”
While this will be Darge’s first
Test against the Championship favourites, he has seen some of the French side at first hand this season in Glasgow’s two Champions Cup games against La Rochelle. The Warriors took time to cope with the physicality of their opponents in their away fixture, but ended up securing a losing bonus point. They then lost at home by eight points, and Darge knows Scotland will have to ensure they do some of the things the Warriors could not quite manage.
“In terms of what we expect, it’ll be similar to what French teams bring as a whole,” he said. “La Rochelle have got a few players in their team who you would imagine will be playing for France – big men who run hard and try and get off-loads away.”
And will he be selected? One of the most commonly asked questions about Darge has been can he play in the same team as another out-and-out openside, his former Edinburgh teammate Hamish Watson? Gregor Townsend answered that question in Cardiff, bringing the Warriors player off the bench with Watson still on the pitch.
If the head coach opts for a 6-2 split among his substitutes, that should make a second cap for the 21-year-old a stronger possibility. There is always a temptation to go for the greatest bulk against a side such as France, but such a strategy, by focusing on the negation of your opponents’ virtues, can be implemented at the expense of some of your own strengths. So, while Watson will almost certainly start at 7, giving Darge a place among the substitutes could ensure more competitiveness at the breakdown later in the game.
And although at 6ft 1in Darge is far from the tallest forward in the Scotland squad, he believes there is greater variety to his game than his role as a specialist 7 may suggest.
“I see myself as an openside, but I don’t shy away from doing stuff in the line-out if required,” he added. “I think it depends on what the coaches feel is necessary for Saturday. And whatever they feel, I’m happy to go ahead with.”
We will learn what they feel on Thursday, when Townsend announces his squad.