Alastair Kellock: Play as if this was your last game for Scotland

Published on Friday 18 March 2011 19:33

ONE last game, one clear aim, and the one focus among the team this week has been on nothing but finishing with victory at Murrayfield.

People ask me how it feels now being captain of a Scotland team that has gone four games without a win, but right now my thoughts are focused elsewhere.

This is not how I envisaged that my first RBS Six Nations Championship as captain going when I began writing this column for readers of The Scotsman at the start of the championship. However, I cannot afford to worry about what is past, I can only learn from it and move on.

This is where we are. You can win or lose international games due to small things, and we have not played well enough to win so far. We are playing for Scotland today, I am captaining Scotland today and we will go out and give everything for the 80 minutes.

We have talked about confidence, but I feel a different confidence now. It's more a knowledge. We know that we have been good enough to win games, but we know more about why it hasn't clicked.

We have taken a lot of confidence from the Calcutta Cup match, where we closed the gap on an England team playing its best for some time and odds-on for the Grand Slam later today. Still we came home without the victory that we all play for, and that supporters need to keep believing we can deliver.

I could talk about how the training has been great again, even though it's been less physical in the shorter time we've had to prepare this week, and how the talk has been very positive right through the squad and coaches, but I'm not a big fan of talking. It is about what we do on the park in the 80 minutes and nothing else.

One guy I would pick out, though, is Nikki Walker. It's disappointing to lose Max Evans, of course, because he's a special player, but my admiration for Nikki has grown in this championship. He's a good player, a good finisher, but he is also very knowledgeable about the game, and has been talking well even when he hasn't been starting.

He has probably learned a lot from his time at the Ospreys, working with internationalists from around the world week in, week out, but he understands the game and has not been scared to put across his views. We need that from players.

When you look at our back line now, it's very physical and that gives you confidence as a forward. We have to do the work to get them on the front foot but you know that they are going to cause damage when we do that. And this will be a ferocious Test match. The Italians commit more players than others might to contest that breakdown, their second man into rucks is hugely aggressive, and they make a mess of your ball.They force teams to go to plan B by not allowing you to get into your flow, your patterns. That was very evident against France. Even when the French had the ball, the Italians dictated what was happening, and that's my experience of games with Italian opposition.

So, we have to be clever in making sure we are accurate and commit the right number of our players to winning the ball.

The set-piece will be good today, even though this could be our hardest test yet. Geoff Cross did well last week, and I'm delighted to see him getting another chance at this level. The lineout took a dip but will be back on form and then it is about bringing together all the good things we have done in patches so far.

We will need patience from players and supporters. Italy are a very good team and this game could go to the wire, but that does not bother me because we will win it whatever way we need to.

No-one is looking back and feeling sorry for themselves in this camp. There is a lot of enthusiasm for this game and everyone is looking forward to getting out there.

Yesterday's team run was great, in sunny weather, and you can feel the desire in players to prove to a Murrayfield crowd, and people watching on TV, what we are capable of; what we were aspiring to in this championship. What I have told the players is to treat this game as if it were their last. We have not played well and you never know when your time as a Scotland player will be up. I've played Italy a few times and last year's defeat was the first, but I remember 2009 clearly. I had not been involved for the best part of 18 months, and being called in only because Jim Hamilton was injured, thinking that this could be my last appearance for Scotland.

I decided that week to enjoy myself, regardless of what happened, and make the most of playing for my country at Murrayfield. I did, and we won pretty well.

That is the memory I've been using this week. I said to the lads yesterday: "play this like it is your last game". We are fortunate to be selected to play rugby for Scotland, and we are fortunate to have been given another chance to win for Scotland. We must not take that for granted, but must grasp the opportunity before it is too late.

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