Allan Massie: Goal kicker is single most important player

BEING no longer a betting man I don’t know what odds the bookies may be offering on Scotland beating the All Blacks next month, but I would guess they are about as long as you will ever get in a two horse race – rather as they might be if a selling plater was up against Frankel at level weights over a mile. This shouldn’t discourage our boys. The odds were pretty long against Europe winning the Ryder Cup when the score stood at 4-10 against them before the last two fourballs on the Saturday improved matters somewhat. I would guess that, in the USA anyway, you’d have cleaned up nicely if you had backed Paul Lawrie to beat the Fedex Cup winner Brent Snedeker by 5 & 3.

Still, even though Scotland have never beaten the All Blacks, and the most recent results have all been horrid, this has been such an extraordinary year in sport that anything seems possible. Moreover, Ireland came mighty close to winning their first Test against New Zealand in the summer, and there’s very little really between Scotland and Ireland. If things go right over the next few months, I would think Andy Robinson would be quietly confident of beating Ireland at Murrayfield in February.

Our two pro teams remain sadly inconsistent. Injuries are taking their toll, but it is always going to be like that. Top-level rugby is now so physical that it is rare for any coach to have all members of his best match-day squad fit at the same time. Then some who might be first-choice for Scotland have not yet quite clicked in the first weeks of the season. That’s no great cause for worry. Few players can maintain top form from September through to May when the Heineken finals and Rabo play-offs take place. Starting the season slowly is no bad thing in individual cases, though, naturally, one hopes that clubs are strong enough to compensate.

Players are under more intense scrutiny now than ever before, and not only by coaches, though their ability to analyse performance in detail is such that general impression has been replaced by precise evaluation of pretty well everything a player has done, or failed to do. For the rest of us, the fact that more matches are televised, with repeated replays being shown, means that we too have a better idea of how individuals have performed. If we are honest we should admit that in the old days matches often passed in a blur and we had only an imperfect notion of who had missed tackles or of what had happened in the run-up to a try. This was true even of experienced and knowledgeable journalists. Some of the content of their report of an international for the Monday paper would be gleaned from conversations after the match rather than from what they had seen and remembered.

There was an interesting case in point when Scotland ran in five tries in that astonishing half-hour in Paris in 1999. It so happened that the television sets in the press box suddenly went blank as one of the tries was about to be scored. One quick-witted journalist called home on his mobile to ask his young son, watching the replay, who had given the scoring pass. The information was relayed – correctly – from , I think, Jedburgh, and generously passed to the other hacks – much relief among those who were writing for the Sundays.

I dare say Andy Robinson has a pretty good idea of what, barring injuries, will be his starting XV on November 11, though doubtless form, as well as past performance and reputation, will determine a few places. At present, especially with Duncan Weir injured, one would suppose that Greig Laidlaw has been pencilled in at number ten. Ruaridh Jackson remains infuriatingly inconsistent. His best is better than Laidlaw’s or Weir’s, his worst worse and more frequent. In any case, even if he is running well, passing imaginatively – and accurately – and firing his line, his goal-kicking is so erratic that picking him would be very risky. He sprays his goal-kicks rather as Tiger Woods sprayed his drives at Medinah.

You simply cannot afford to do without a reliable goal kicker. In the English Premiership last week Saracens , despite playing desperately dull rugby, beat the more daring and adventurous Harlequins 18-16, simply because young Owen Farrell succeeded with his six penalty kicks at goal. It may be a pity, but your goal kicker is the most important single person in a team. Scotland and Italy have been down at the bottom of the Six Nations most seasons this century. If we have avoided the wooden spoon more often than the Italians, it’s because Chris Paterson and Dan Parks kicked goals far more reliably than the assorted Italian kickers. The importance of goal-kicking is such that at present I would expect Leigh Halfpenny to be the Lions’ Test full-back next summer, rather than Rob Kearney, simply because he is the most reliable goal kicker available to them.