SCOTLAND have announced the appointment of Richie Gray as a consultant coach for the duration of the RBS 6 Nations Championship. A former Gala captain and Scotland age-grade cap, Gray was South Africa’s specialist breakdown coach for the last three years, including the Rugby World Cup when the Springboks played against Scotland.
Gray, who has been given the title of defensive contact specialist, will join the squad when they convene in St Andrews today. “It’s a great honour to coach any country, but to be offered the opportunity to coach your own is something special indeed,” he said yesterday.
“The defensive breakdown is an area highlighted by the coaches as an area for improvement, for which I’ve been given a very specific brief to work alongside defence coach Matt Taylor for the seven-week period of the RBS 6 Nations.”
Head coach Vern Cotter added: “On behalf of the national team I’d like to welcome Richie to our coaching set-up for the 2016 RBS 6 Nations. We’re looking forward to adding his experience and passion to the group.”
Gray began his coaching career as a development manager with Scottish Rugby in the mid-1990s. He also coached national age-grade teams as well as Biggar, Gala and the South of Scotland.
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