Townsend backs two captains’ strategy

Published on Thursday 5 November 2009 22:00

GREGOR Townsend believes two heads are better than one as far as the Scotland captaincy is concerned. The attack coach is fully behind Andy Robinson’s decision for Mike Blair and Chris Cusiter to share the armband for this month’s autumn internationals.

The radical move, which will see whichever scrum-half is on the field at the time skippering the side, has raised eyebrows in some quarters.

But Townsend, the former Scotland captain, agrees with his head coach that leadership needs to come from as many players as possible. “It is a unique idea, but one thing we’re trying to do is create a learning environment and also give responsibility and empowerment to the players, so we need as many leaders as we can.

“We’ve got them in certain areas like attack, defence, set-piece, but to have two captains just adds to that, that we have someone on the field who’s going to be the leader, someone off the field, and they can rely on each other to move the team forward.”

Blair and Cusiter have been vying for the scrum-half jersey for a number of years but Townsend believes sharing the captaincy will actually improve their relationship.

“I think we’ve got a very good situation in having Chris and Mike and Rory (Lawson) as well, who plays at Gloucester – three very good scrum-halves in the squad – knowing they have got someone there to support them, that can add knowledge. Now we’re a 32-man squad, but we’ll be going down to 22, so the more knowledge we can use in sharing that leadership, the better.”

Scotland play Fiji at Murrayfield tomorrow week, then Australia and Argentina.