While Finn Russell and Sione Tuipulotu present themselves as the fashion icons of the Scotland squad, Ollie Smith is the man with the real inside line into that world.
With the rest of the Scotland squad spending their two days off at the start of this week hanging out around their hotel pool and playing some golf in nearby Antibes, the reserve full-back headed off to Paris to visit his girlfriend, Annabel, who is studying for a Masters in Fashion Management at the city’s prestigious IÉSEG School of Management.
It's not a bad change of scene, but the 23-year-old couldn’t quite take his mind off his principal purpose for being in France and the unfinished business of helping Scotland navigate their way to the knock-out stages of this World Cup.
“You want to play as much as possible – especially when you lose, you want to right the wrongs instantly,” he said. “But it is nice to have a couple of days off to reset, get out of camp and this environment, so that when you do come back into it you are raring to go again for training.”
As one of a group of players who made an impact off the bench against South Africa last weekend, Smith is now keen to show what he can do from the start in Scotland’s next match against Tonga in Nice on Sunday week.
“Even to get on the bench against South Africa was an amazing experience, but it would be awesome – a dream come true – to start for Scotland in a World Cup match,” he said.
“Playing with guys like Sione Vailanu at Glasgow, we know that Tonga will be very physical and very direct so we’re expecting a lot of that.
"We have played a lot against the Tongan boys at Scarlets and they are tricky, they can do pretty much everything, so it’s not going to be an easy game by any means.
“We’ll be watching their game against Ireland at the weekend closely to see where the opportunities lie.
“The big improvement we have to make from the South Africa game is we have to pull the trigger when the options are on, because we were maybe not confident enough in our own skillset in that match.”
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