The melding of past experience with present day success could build a brighter future for Scottish rugby and few are better placed to help bring that about than the national team’s assistant coach Mike Blair.
Long associated with Edinburgh in his playing days, helping the team to its greatest days, he is now an assistant coach with Glasgow Warriors, as well as the national team and he recognised that the inviting challenge now facing the Scotland management is to blend the strengths that have seen both the country’s professional teams reach the Champions Cup quarter-finals for the first time.
“Edinburgh and Glasgow have varying styles so with Scotland we’re in a great situation that we can pull a bit from each team and try to find that perfect blend of play that suits our players,” he acknowledged.
What has been telling in the course of this Champions Cup campaign is the way that in their first involvement in the competition under new head coach Richard Cockerill, Edinburgh have improved on anything achieved by Glasgow over several years of trying.
Having taken on what has long been considered an inferior group of players, he has identified their strengths and found ways in which they can be used to best effect, as Blair acknowledged.
“I think what Edinburgh have done well is picked a style that suits their players,” he said.
“Maybe previously, coaches have had a certain style in mind that didn’t necessarily suit the players they’ve got.
“One of Edinburgh’s obvious strength is the front five, along with the set-piece work and the kick chase. That’s something that is up there with the very best in Europe. They’ve built their game on that and they’re adding a lot of different layers to their game now.
“Their defence has been excellent with Callum MacRae there and with Duncan Hodge, you could see that attacking flair in the Montpellier game.
“So I guess they’ve built a base on the kicking game and defence, but you can see a lot more coming from their game now. It’s an exciting time to be an Edinburgh supporter.”
That is very much in line with the thinking that earned the national team its successes in the eighties and nineties as teams that were by no means packed with players blessed with exceptional talent found ways of combining to compete with the world’s best.
That is very different from coaches imposing their philosophies on players, regardless of their abilities, but there was a slight inconsistency in Blair’s reasoning when invited to consider how much Scotland should learn from the way the Edinburgh pack in particular, has performed.
“You pick players for certain styles, you pick styles for certain players,” he said.
“We will have a balance to our game, looking to take the best out of Glasgow, the best out of Edinburgh, the best out of the individuals we have in the exile game and come up with a plan for that.”
Even so, there seems greater justification for confidence heading into the Six Nations Championship than for many years, with selection set to be based on established units.
“One of the things we’re very keen on is cohesion in the units who have played together a lot, bringing that through to international level as well,” he said.
“Obviously, when it comes to style of play, there will be discrepancies, different ways each team plays, but the beauty of the situation we have is we can pick things from different teams, see how that suits different players and then put that all together as one package.
“So it’s really exciting that we’re able to do that and I think we’ll gel quickly.
“Already today, we’ve been running around in shapes and patterns that are fairly new to the guys, but they’ve picked them up quickly.
“Part of that is communication, which is linked to player responsibility and leadership within the group. Who is pushing the communication, who is pushing the standards?”
That, indeed, is key and, as Richard Cockerill and Edinburgh have demonstrated so rapidly and inspiringly in the past 18 months, Scottish rugby has the personnel to do much better than it has in recent years, generating a new sense of expectation for the campaign to come.
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