Alan Massie: Hope springs eternal that Johnson can dispel myth of ‘international experience’

The SRU chief executive, Mark Dodson, sounded quite upbeat in his interview with David Ferguson the other day.

Good for him. Others are less sanguine. The truth is that the troubles of the economy haven’t lasted anything like as long as the dark days of Scottish rugby. Austerity, or its rugby equivalent, has been the rule at Murrayfield for years. None of the members of our international age-group squads can have a clear memory of the last successful Scotland XV; even Stuart Hogg was a wee boy of six when we won the Five Nations title in 1999.

Sadly, there have been a number of very fine players who never experienced anything more than the occasional victory in a Scottish jersey. Speculation about the make-up of the summer’s Lions squad is, from our point of view, either embarrassing or depressing, or indeed both. So it’s a question whether Mr Dodson can really see light at the end of the tunnel, or is merely whistling to keep his spirits up.

In the interview, he touched on the search for a successor to Andy Robinson as national coach, Scott Johnson having been given the job only on an interim basis, and regretted that “at the moment there are not a lot of Scottish coaches with the requisite international experience” for the job. You might indeed say there are none, but then, again, you might ask if this matters. Is “international experience” actually “requisite”?

In England, after a disappointing World Cup campaign in 2011, Stuart Lancaster took over from Martin Johnson on an interim basis, while the RFU invited applications for the job of national coach from all over the world. Lancaster had been head of the RFU’s Elite Development since 2008 and had coached age-group sides and the England Saxons, but he had no international experience at the top level. Nevertheless, he hasn’t done a bad job. England won four matches in the Six Nations last spring and beat New Zealand in 
November. That may be thought a one-off, but they came mighty close to beating both South Africa and Australia too. Lancaster’s success suggests that international coaching experience isn’t actually necessary.

Since 2000, Scotland have had four head coaches: Ian McGeechan, Matt Williams, Frank Hadden and Andy Robinson. McGeechan and Robinson had a wealth of international experience, both as players and coaches. Williams had coached NSW Waratahs, Leinster and Ireland “A”. Hadden had coached Edinburgh, after successful years in charge of rugby at Merchiston, but had no international experience. If he didn’t transform Scotland’s fortunes, he arguably did at least as well as McGeechan and Robinson, and far better than Williams with what was 
essentially the same squad.

So, if international experience is not essential, then the SRU might be advised to look for someone Scottish – unless Scott Johnson does enough in his interim period in charge to be confirmed in the job as Stuart Lancaster has been in England.

Johnson has now completed his coaching team for the Six Nations by adding Dean Ryan and Stevie Scott to those already in position – defence coach Matt Taylor, kicking coach Duncan Hodge and scrum coach Massimo Cuttita. It would appear that he is going to be responsible for the backs, and attack in general, himself. This is at least bold, since he will stand or fall by his ability to get the team to score tries, our chronic inability to do so being the chief cause of our lamentable record in recent years. Since Chris Paterson retired, Sean Lamont has been our leading try-scorer, and his tally isn’t in double figures. It has recently been usual for the sum total of tries scored by the members of a Scotland XV to have been less than that of a couple of individuals in the opposition.

Still, every January hope is resurgent. Things can only get better, we tell ourselves, only to find that actually they remain much the same. Searching for rational grounds for optimism, we aren’t now quite scraping the barrel. Glasgow have been playing well. The scrum and line-out should be all right, especially now that Ryan Grant has established himself as the best loose-head prop, though Euan Murray will miss the Ireland game on Sunday, 24 February.

I hope a place is found for Rob Harley in the back-row. There’s a fiery touch to his game; he makes a bloody nuisance of himself as Finlay Calder and John Jeffrey used to. Behind the scrum, Ruaridh Jackson is playing very well. His delayed pass which created a try for Sean Maitland against Edinburgh was exquisite, and his own interception try was just like those his Glasgow coach, Gregor Townsend, used to score. There were glimpses in that match, too, of Stuart Hogg coming into form – despite that appalling knock-on which cost Glasgow a bonus-point try.

Finally, Scott Johnson’s reputation as a bit of a maverick suggests there may be one or two unexpected selections. If so, we can only hope they are good ones. Ultimately, the success or failure of an international coach often seems to depend on the selections he makes rather than on anything else he does or says – and you don’t need international experience to get your selection right.