IT HAS been a momentous few months for Fraser Brown as he went from being unwanted on the summer tour to the chosen heir at hooker in the national side.
IT HAS been a momentous few months for Fraser Brown as he went from being unwanted on the summer tour to the chosen heir at hooker in the national side. Now he has the chance to rise another rung on his steady climb to the top as he prepares to line up against Toulouse in the European Champions Cup, the clash between two of the seven unbeaten teams in the tournament.
He knows it will be anything but easy. Toulouse, after all, have won the senior European competition four times, have won 99 of the 140 matches they have played, including five out of six against the Scots, and have one of the biggest and strongest packs in world rugby. Yet, Brown feels confident that they can take on the juggernaut and stop it in its tracks.
"We are top of the group, this the best chance we have had in European competition so we are going to go down to France try to keep that up," he said. "Up until the weekend our scrum has been up and down, maybe 40 minutes of good scrummaging and then a few bad ones. Something we have put emphasis on is our concentration, we cannot go in and scrum really well on our own five-metre line and then go 30 metres up the pitch and slacken off.
"There was a big emphasis on that last weekend, which showed because we got four penalties and could have had a few more. This will be more of the same. We know how they scrum, we have reviewed it so it is a case of getting our drills right, getting our height right and making sure we are concentrating for every one.
"If you look at the Top14, a lot of the French sides try to get a penalty out of every scrum, but we look to play rugby off the back of the scrum. If we have a powerful scrum, we want to go forward and exploit the space in the backline. The French like to get penalties, kick it into the corner and set up line-out drives, so they probably see it in a slightly different way
"We are confident in the way we scrummage and if we scrummage well, it does not matter who we come up against. There are always going to be one or two or three in a game where you don't quite get the rub of the green, it is about flushing that, going to the next one and making sure that you get solid ball."
His rising status in the game is total vindication for Brown who was axed by Edinburgh after a period out injured. He worked relentlessly on his fitness to come back, signed for Glasgow and before he had even played for them earned the reward with his first Scotland cap in South Africa last year.
Even so, it tended to be Dougie Hall and Pat MacArthur who were getting the big games, while club rival Kevin Bryce won the final hooker spot in this year's Scotland tour, so it was something of a surprise that he leapfrogged all of them to win a place in the national squad for the internationals in November.
Reality struck back when he was left out of the match-day squad for the opening game but he forced his way into the match-day 23 for the second match, coming on for a late cameo, and then getting a longer go at it against Tonga. While Ross Ford, the starting hooker, was getting glowing write-ups, the fact is that when Brown came on, it was a seamless transition, the line out just as accurate, the scrum just as strong and the ball carrying in the loose just as dynamic.
"The confidence in the Scotland squad was really high and with the start Glasgow had to the season it was pretty seamless to go into the Scotland squad,." he said. "With Ross [Ford] playing so well in front of me I knew I had to play well otherwise I would not be there the following week. It is a lot easier coming into that environment and then doing what I do naturally, carry ball, make tackles."
So from tour surplus to key squad member and starter for his club in the space of five months; it has been a meteoric rise but making history in Toulouse would cap even all that.
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