Gregor Townsend has turned to the players who helped him claim his greatest success as a coach as he confronts the first potential crisis of his time as Scotland’s head coach, with members of Glasgow Warriors’ 2015 Pro12 winning team forming the spine of the team that will seek to upset unbeaten Wales this weekend.
Up front and in the back three the reliability of Jonny Gray and Tommy Seymour is rewarded with 50th appearances, the pair representing something of a throwback in not having to rely on multiple appearances as replacements to reach that mark, Seymour having started every Test he has played in, while Gray has come off the bench just once, in an emergency role as a flanker, in his last 44 appearances.
It is, however, in the heart of the team that the Glasgow 2015 influence is most pronounced, with former Warriors Josh Strauss and Finn Russell either side of Ali Price, whose current colleagues at Scotstoun, Pete Horne and Nick Grigg, combine in the midfield.
Price and Grigg were not involved in that Pro12 triumph four years ago, but both were brought to Scotland when Townsend was in charge there and are players who have consequently bought into his crowd-pleasing philosophy which is reliant on maintaining on the team’s pace of play.
“We want to see the strengths of each player when we select them and Ali’s strengths are around that speed, whether it’s him just getting the ball way quicker, or him having a run, too,” he said.“And his support lines have been very good, the try he scored against France was very similar to the try he scored against Cardiff two weeks previously, so that’s something we want to see from him in the game.
“Greig can play it very quickly, too. A few weeks ago, he got a nice break for Clermont that led to a try. He does have different strengths – the knowledge of the game, his kicking game has been very consistent – so we want to make sure that we bring both their strengths out when they both play.”
Maybe so, but this selection feels like a reversion to the thinking Townsend took into last year’s Six Nations Championship.
Laidlaw had been previous head coach Vern Cotter’s on-field general, but the injury that had sidelined him for most of 2017, during which the change of coaching regime occurred, seemed to play to the new man’s preferences, allowing Price to get a run of starts.
That project stalled when Price’s poor performance contributed to the heavy defeat Scotland suffered in the Six Nations opener in Cardiff, allowing Laidlaw to stamp his authority on the team once more and for all that Wales can be expected to apply considerable pressure to the Glasgow scrum-half once again, the environment will be very different tomorrow and Townsend also gave the impression of looking to the longer term with this selection, in more ways than one.
“We know there is a big tournament on the horizon and we will see what happens after the World Cup,” he said.
“That tends to be the time when players reassess where they are, when the coaches reassess what is their next challenge. We know Greig is determined to play his best, play well for Scotland and win for Scotland. He is the only player who has started the last six games which shows how important a member of our squad he is.”
If, then, time is running down for one little Borderer, opportunities are opening up for another with the need for speed also reflected in the selection of buzz-bomb Darcy Graham for a first start on the wing in the absence of the injured Sean Maitland.
“He’s come on in both of his games from the bench, he’s had the opportunity to play Wales away and France away and took that game to the opposition by making breaks in both those games,” Townsend said of Graham.
“He’s been in excellent form for his club. He gives you energy, he gets stuck in defensively. He may not be as tall as George North, but he gets off the ground and wins ball in air.
“He’s gone up against some very big wingers this year and done really well, and he’s a dangerous attacker. We love his attitude, we love his ability, and its great he’s getting a chance to start for Scotland.”
The only change to the pack is meanwhile the recall of fit-again WP Nel, but there was some surprise that the opportunity to freshen up the back-row was not taken following the return to fitness of both Hamish Watson, who returned to action with Edinburgh last Saturday and Sam Skinner, who will now do so with Exeter Chiefs this weekend.
In explaining that, Townsend claimed that Josh Strauss had kept his place on the back of what he described as “one of the best performances I’ve seen by a Scottish back-rower with tackles and ball carrying against Ireland,” a claim which is doubtless backed by statistics, but was not immediately obvious in game-changing terms.
Watson will get a chance to influence matters tomorrow, though, his coach observing that: “He can have a really good impact… he’s been out two months, so he’s short of match fitness, so we believe the balance is better with him coming off the bench rather than starting.”
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