Scotland’s players were not told who would be facing Ireland until a day later than usual as the coaches dealt with their embarrassment of riches according to head coach Gregor Townsend.
The management team had originally planned to bring Sean Maitland directly back into the team as soon as he proved his fitness, but the first ever Scottish Six Nations hat-trick registered by Blair Kinghorn forced them to deliberate for longer before sticking with the plan.
“We did not announce the squad until yesterday which meant those discussions lasted longer. We also had to wait if Sean could train this week. Sean trained fully on Monday and Tuesday which gave us much more confidence this was the selection we were going with,” Townsend explained.
“It is credit to Blair’s performance that people are saying this was a tough decision and rightly (but) Sean is an excellent player who has shown his quality week in and week out with Saracens and also with Scotland. He has scored a lot of tries for Scotland in the last twelve months. He brings more than just the wing role of making breaks and scoring tries. He brings a lot of communication defensively, his kick chase, he must be one of the best for that. He is one of our leaders.”
Another option was to leave out Tommy Seymour, but he has also scored an international hat-trick this season and, like Maitland, has been a regular for several seasons when fit.
“Tommy played well at the weekend and showed at the weekend he is one of the best players in the world in catching balls in the air,” said Townsend. “To have both available at the same time this weekend is a boost. They are in great form and with Blair in great form as an option off the bench is too.”
There was a similar dilemma at lock since the consistency of Edinburgh’s front five this season rendered a threat to the involvement of another who is generally considered an automatic choice when fit, but Jonny Gray has also been immediately recalled.
“Second row’s the position we have most depth of competition in,” said Townsend. “Ben (Toolis) and Grant (Gilchrist) have been playing well and it was good that they started with the rest of the Edinburgh front five last week, but Jonny is a very important player for us. He has been consistently outstanding for Scotland. This game is set for a Jonny Gray performance of huge effort in defence and ball carrying. Together with his experience of playing at international level he was always going to come back into the team if he was fit.”
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