PLAYING in France this week is going to be tricky, but the baby of the Edinburgh party travelling to face Agen in the European Challenge Cup is confident his team-mates have the resilience not to let the occasion get to them.
For Jamie Ritchie, the key to everything is that Edinburgh must not let the occasion overwhelm them on the first weekend of sporting action in the country since the terror attack in Paris.
"You have to pay respects because it was a devastating thing that happened, but for us it is about concentrating on the game," he said. "We will observe the minute’s silence and show our respect and I am sure the national anthem will be sung. We just have to weather that and just wait for the whistle to go.
"I don’t think we can get too much into the emotional side of things. We have to take ourselves away from that and concentrate on the game. The boys will be focused, that will be the main thing going into the fixture."
It is a big game personally for Ritchie, last season's Scotland's Under-20 captain and, at 19, in the running to keep the position in this year's campaign. After a short stint off the bench more than a year ago, this will be his first competitive action since then in an Edinburgh shirt. He needs a big game – probably at blindside flanker, though the team won't be announced until tomorrow – to make sure it is not an equally long time before his next chance comes.
Part of the trouble is that his age-group commitments mean he misses the Six Nations window which is usually the breakthrough time for young players, while as a utility back row player, he is vying for a spot in the most competitive section of the Edinburgh team.
"I have not had as much rugby as I would have liked this season, even for a [BT] Premiership side, so I am looking forward to getting out there and pulling on an Edinburgh jersey," he said. "The competition is huge, massive. But these are guys that you can learn off all the time. You look at guys like Nasi [Manu]. Obviously Dents [David Denton] has moved on now but you bounce off them and learn from them. It is good to have competition because it helps drive your own game forward and I am feeding off their experience."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here