Cotter and the year of living dangerously

This the year of destiny for Cotter. He sits in a conference room in Murrayfield to announce the names of 32 young men who will seal his fate, enhance or destroy his future.

This how it starts. A squad announcement in January, a chat with the press and then a period of anticipation, anxious or otherwise. Cotter has 10 matches to change the world, or at least the patch of it where the flag of Scottish rugby is planted. He has nine months to produce a bouncing, boisterous and successful team.

Cotter must have a reasonable Six Nations followed by a successful World Cup. If he faces a 10th competitive match - after the five in the 6 Nations and the four in the group stages of the world cup - then he can consider that his cv has been enhanced and that he has become a candidate for a bigger job. This where it ends, perhaps, for Cotter and Scotland..

If Cotter is still in charge of a team in the World Cup on the evening of October 10, he will know that he has successfully negotiated a difficult group containing USA, Japan, Samoa and South Africa. Scottish rugby will be, at least, satisfied. The world may lie at his feet. Cotter loves Scotland but his desire to succeed will not be quenched by it. He has to win to move on. He has to prove himself a viable international coach.

This is the year. He approaches the challenges of 2015 burdened by the hope of 2014. Cotter has won five of his seven matches as Scotland's head coach. He is respected by the players. The press believe he is straight, honest and capable. The fans are daring to bask in optimism, choosing the dangerous option for a Scottish rugby fan of living in expectation.

This gathering of giddy hope is invested in the currency of Cotter. He speaks strongly and with certainty, he smiles when he wants and is considered by some - but never within his earshot - of being ever so slightly dull.

This is almost certainly a cunning ruse. He is capable of the spectacular, certainly on the basis of his squad announcement yesterday. He named Hugh Blake, a 22-year-old flanker, as part of his plans for the 6 Nations. The assembled press could not have been more surprised if he had selected Ronnie Corbett at lock.

Blake, a New Zealander with the obligatory Scottish grandfather, did not so much come out of left-field but from a different time zone. His name was so unexpected that Google strained at its very seams yesterday afternoon investigating ''Hugh Blake rugby''. One former Scottish internationalist simply texted: ''Who?''

The answer is that young Blake has three full lines in Wikipedia, detailing that, yes, he is 22, yes, he is a flanker, and yes, he played for Otago and now for Edinburgh.

The importance of the selection of this unheralded New Zealander, sorry, proud Scot, is that it gives an insight in Cotter's way of working and his personality. He has declined the safe option of including Johnie Beattie, John Barclay or Kelly Brown to include a player he has only watched on video.

''I am just a Kiwi farmer,'' says Cotter regularly, with a practised self-deprecatory grin. He is not. He uses the word ''developing'' so much there are those who believe he is a photographic printer. He is not.

He is, rather, an ambitious and experienced coach with visions of taking the Graham Henry route of leading a 6 Nations side en route to taking over the All Blacks. His past follows that well-worn narrative of the mediocre player becoming an impressive coach: he played No.8 for Counties Manukau in the New Zealand provincial championship and in France for Lourdes before coaching Bay of Plenty, coaching the Crusaders forwards and then galvanising a Clermont side to win a French championship and reach to reach a European Cup final.

He spent seven years with Clermont. He built something impressive there. He means to do the same in Scotland but does not feel the need to reveal to the outside world too much of how he intends to accomplish this.

He sidesteps the personal questions with the ease of Barry John on speed.

Asked if this is the biggest year of his career, he replies: ''I don't think I'm the centre of this. There's a whole lot more people involved, and it's going to be the combined energy and the desire of everybody to do well.''

Asked if his adventurous selection policy is a sign of him preferring the excitement of potential over the comfort of sale choices, he talks about picking players in form, of encouraging his team to express itself of trying, yup, to develop a side that can change the way it plays in a moment and according to circumstance.

This is 100% proof Cotter. It then comes with an unexpected and powerful chaser. ''We back our instincts,'' he says. He has said previously that his decisions to come to Scotland was ''instinctive''. But, like Blake, it was also the best, perhaps only route to international rugby.

So when he talks of Blake is he in some way also speaking of himself? It is an intriguing thought and one that does not buckle under examination.

"He is a talented young player who has made the choice to come over here. He could have stayed comfortably over in New Zealand and worked his way up over there,'' he says of his wild card in a pack he believes must be invigorated by pace and youthful aggression.

So who will be his side's toughest opponents? "A lot of people say ourselves,'' says Cotter, allowing himself one out of his daily ration of smiles.

He has thus given a nod to adopted country's capacity for self-destruction. He has no plans, however, to bow to it. This, after all, is his year.