Hadden takes a horses for courses approach to Paris selection

Published on Wednesday 11 February 2009 21:57

SCOTLAND coach Frank Hadden explained his team selection for Saturday's match against France by reiterating that he started to consider his options for Paris before last week's opening Six Nations match against Wales.

"I said last week that we had done a bit of pre-selection for both games as we saw them as totally different kinds of games," said the coach. "We see it as a very different approach against a very different defence this weekend."

Thom Evans backed that up by stating Hadden had hinted to him that he would be involved against France as the coaches look to a more expansive attack.

While very few players could have any qualms about being dropped after Sunday's display, it does not reflect well on the selection that Allister Hogg, the Edinburgh back row who was played in the unusual position of blindside flanker, again becomes a yo-yo figure in the team, while Edinburgh centre Ben Cairns and Sean Lamont, the Northampton wing on the verge of signing for Edinburgh, will feel they had no decent opportunities with which to prove themselves.

However, there will be more excitement about the players coming in. Thom Evans replaces Lamont and Max Evans takes Cairns' place. The switch will be popular, so exciting has been the brothers' form for Glasgow this season, notably against Toulouse – and a back line very similar to what they will face on Saturday.

The decision to replace Hogg with Alasdair Strokosch, an out-and-out blindside flanker, is what many fans will feel should have been made last week.

It remains clear that assistants Mike Brewer and Graham Steadman influenced last week's selection, and Brewer has again favoured flanker Jason White in the second row, and no specialist lock on the bench – Simon Taylor again deputises. But Hadden expects a much-improved forward display.

"We lost the collisions last weekend; we came second in the contact," he added. "You can talk about all sorts of things about how you want to play, but unless you win these then all that stuff goes out the window.

"It's vital that we're far more competitive in contact situations this week. Our scrum has made so much progress, but we conceded 11 points from scrums last weekend. Other teams had been conceding penalties to us at the scrums, so there has been a big swing in terms of how effective our scrum was.

"Ally Dickinson hadn't played an enormous amount of time at tighthead but we thought the work he did there was enough to give us confidence.

"We were very happy with Jason's (White's] performance in the second row last weekend, which was one selection that paid off for us."

On whether he had considered dropping his skipper, Mike Blair, Hadden replied: "Not just now", but said he was impressed with the impact of Chris Cusiter off the bench.