THE hushed, historic surrounds of Edinburgh University’s Old College library may be among the last places you would expect to meet Nathan Hines, but here he is all the same. It’s Tuesday afternoon, Vern Cotter has just announced his Scotland squad for the Rugby World Cup, and Hines, one of the head coach’s assistants, is here to discuss that selection and how it will be used in the tournament.
Hines has been part of Cotter’s staff for only a few months now, but he has quickly found a more clearly defined role than his post as “resource coach” might imply. Having only stopped playing last season, the 39-year-old is closer in age and experience to the squad than Cotter – but also knows the coach well from his time at Clermont Auvergne. In other words, he is the ideal go-between.
“I think the boys are a little bit more comfortable coming to me and asking stuff, maybe because I’m not as stern as big Vern,” Hines explains. “Because I’ve only recently stopped playing, they feel they can relate to me, I think.
“They might not see me as a coach yet. It’s a bit different. I want them to think I’m approachable. You can’t get the most out of them if they don’t trust you or feel comfortable with the way you are.”
The selection meeting itself was a frank discussion, according to Hines, and unsurprisingly given the outcome, the back five of the pack was the area of the squad that took up most time. “Not so much disagreements, more that everyone had their points of view, who would be best suited to go into the 31,” he says. “So, yeah, we talked about that. There was no shouting, wrestling, boxing, nothing like that, but we talked about it. The second row/back row combination was more up in the air than anything else. But we spent a lot of time over every part of the team, because we wanted to make sure we got everything right. But obviously there are more permutations with the second row/back row.”
There are almost endless permutations when it comes to deciding how to use those 31 players in the four pool matches. It makes sense to treat the first two, against Japan then the USA, as a double-header, because they are only four days apart. But what to do in the next game against South Africa, given that the crucial match for qualification may well be the last one, against Samoa?
With a couple of weeks still to go before the opener, Cotter and his staff are in no rush to set a strategy in stone. The head coach has said he believes Japan will field a second string in their first game against the Springboks, accept defeat and move on. But Scotland, according to Hines, are unlikely to select a shadow side for the South Africa match.
“We don’t want to lose games. There’s a little bit of game management in the way you prepare: you look at the tournament as a whole. We have yet to discuss how are we going to play it? We haven’t decided that. The thing is, we don’t want to go and play South Africa and lose by 50. What’s the use in that?
“Everyone wants to compete. Personally if I was playing I’d want to win, so I don’t think that anyone we put in that squad, in that team, will want to be saying ‘Well, we’re just here to make up the numbers’. I don’t think that’s the way we’re going to approach it, but, honestly, we haven’t made up our minds yet. We’ll have guys who are bumped and bruised [after the first two matches], and we’ll have to reassess who we have to pick from and how the guys travel and how we’re playing as well. There are a lot of factors to consider before we think about a match that’s four games away.”
Hines has found Cotter the Scotland coach to be the same character as he was at Clermont, although if anything he thinks he is a more natural fit for his job here than he was in France. “He asks questions of you all the time, keeps you on your toes,” he says.
“He’s honest with you and asks you to be honest with yourself. If you’re not doing it right, he’ll tell you. He’ll also chuck a couple of curve balls in during training, saying ‘Let’s try this and see how everyone adapts’. That’s good – you don’t want it scripted, or for people to get comfortable.
“He’s a humble kind of guy, just does his business, and I think that’s why he’s fitted in with the Scottish team and Scottish people. He doesn’t shout from the rooftops. He just wants to do his job and make people better.”
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