As old comrades Gordon Reid and Jon Welsh were recalled to the Scotland starting line-up yesterday, while another former Glasgow Warriors front-row man, Scott Lawson, was brought onto the bench, there was a sense that the team management may have been done a favour in being forced to re-examine their front-row resources ahead of this Six Nations Championship.

Always a doughty scrummager if Welsh has not quite reinvented himself since joining Newcastle Falcons after his ill-fated 2015 World Cup when he was controversially penalised to give Australia the chance to snatch victory in the quarter-final, he looks to have improved his fitness, while Reid, has also benefited from the toughening up process that is part and parcel of playing in the front-row in the English Premiership, where Lawson has long plied his trade.

So, as head coach Gregor Townsend dealt with the inevitable questioning yesterday regarding the difficulty of fielding a competitive front-row with three full combinations unavailable through injury and suspension, Wales coach Warren Gatland having hinted at targeting that department, he rightly observed that he is bringing in two veterans who have every reason to be excited about getting a chance to return.

“Jon can’t wait to play for Scotland again. The way he’s trained, the way he’s prepared, has been excellent to see and on the other side Gordy has really hit form since he missed November while out for three months,” said Townsend

“We’ve been really impressed with his scrummaging. We believe we’ve got a really strong scrummaging unit, with two players that can scrum and also add impact off the bench in Jamie Bhatti and Murray McCallum.”

Townsend noted that Reid had to perform well to edge out Bhatti, who impressed on his first exposure to the Test arena when competing with Darryl Marfo, another newcomer who is now injured, during the autumn.
The coach consequently believes that in fellow 21-year-old Bhatti and Edinburgh clubmate Marfo, young McCallum should not lack inspiration ahead of a probable Test debut, in spite of his club coach Richard Cockerill having recently suggested that while he will not let anyone down in terms of attitude, this call up may have come a bit early.

“He’s ready, for the same reasons I would give you about Darryl Marfo [his Edinburgh clubmate] being ready in November,” Townsend asserted.“We’ve seen, over the last couple of weeks, that he’s gone up against some tough opposition, Stade Francais in particular. There were a lot of scrums in that second game. He played 70 minutes, which was really a step for him, because he’s mainly been off the bench this year.

“It’s now up to players like Murray, being uncapped, but also Scott Lawson, Jon Welsh and Gordon Reid, who haven’t been involved with us for a while, to go and grab their opportunity. The model is there, the role model, in Darryl and Jamie Bhatti. You give players opportunities and, more often than not, they take them.”

In the back-row the selectors have meanwhile rewarded the consistency shown by Cornell du Preez as part of a resurgent Edinburgh side, in particular over the past couple of months when Glasgow Warriors captain Ryan Wilson has been sidelined with an ankle injury. It is further out that the coach has reverted to type in taking the unnecessary-looking risks that have always characterised his approach to the game.
Byron McGuigan’s extraordinary two try debut against the Wallabies has earned him another chance, but in the continued absence of Alex Dunbar and Duncan Taylor, due to head knocks, Townsend could have kept the same midfield as played against Australia rather than drop Peter Horne to the bench and shift Huw Jones infield from the outside centre slot in which he has made a spectacular start to his Test career, scoring seven tries in 11 matches to accommodate Chris Harris’s first international start.

There was little in the 27-year-old’s performance during his brief appearance as Scotland beat Samoa in their autumn series opener in November to suggest he is going to make a similar impact to Jones and while Townsend was full of praise for the way Harris has performed for Newcastle Falcons and in training, he admitted he would, for the most part, have preferred to field club units as in the autumn and as Wales have done in placing a heavy reliance on the in-form Scarlets.

“In an ideal world, if we could have players who had been playing regularly together, that would help in certain areas,” Townsend admitted. “Whether that’s front row, back three, hooker and second row, half backs, it’s something that factors into our selection, but when you have players unavailable, you’ve got to pick what you feel is best for the team. You get a gauge from how they’re training together, how they’re combining and obviously the form they’ve been in.”