BLAIR Kinghorn’s ascent from raw rookie to established international has been so swift that it now seems hard to believe that his first involvement with the Scotland team was a mere eight months ago. Even then, he was no more than an observer, taken to Cardiff as cover without even getting a seat on the bench.
That first Six Nations game of the season was a traumatic one for Gregor Townsend’s side as Wales strolled to a 34-7 win, but as a non-combatant Kinghorn has less troubled memories of the occasion, and is looking forward to returning to the Principality Stadium on Saturday.
“I was there as 24th man,” he recalled during last week’s Scotland training camp in St Andrews. “I was rooming with Henry Pyrgos, who was the 25th man.
“It was a brilliant experience, my first taste of being 24th man in an away game. Obviously it was a really disappointing result, but a good experience to be in with the team, doing the warm-up, and seeing what it’s like on matchday in an international set-up.
“Once the roof’s shut, it’s a pretty intimidating place to go. It’s a great stadium, the noise is unbelievable and the atmosphere is brilliant. It’s places like that you want to go and play rugby. At the Principality, you try to talk to people in the warm-up and you can’t really hear them. It’s a brilliant atmosphere, they always get a great crowd in there and the noise is always right at the top.”
With Glasgow’s Stuart Hogg recovering from ankle surgery, Kinghorn seems sure to start at full-back and win his sixth cap. As the match is being played outside of the international window, only Warriors and Edinburgh players will be available to Townsend, meaning the starting line-up should be along the lines of:
Kinghorn; Tommy Seymour, Huw Jones, Alex Dunbar, Lee Jones; Adam Hastings, Ali Price; Allan Dell, Stuart McInally, WP Nel, Jonny Gray, Grant Gilchrist, Ryan Wilson, Hamish Watson, Matt Fagerson.
Whatever team is selected, however, the task will be clear: to perform with both more composure and greater dynamism than Scotland did in February.
“It wasn’t the result we were looking for,” Kinghorn added when asked about that game. “We had a hard look at it, reviewed it and realised we just didn’t play the way we wanted to play. We’re looking to put the wrongs right when we go down there now.”
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