Allan Massie: Scotland must be roosters not feather dusters

The Rugby World Cup is creeping up on us, but the creep will soon turn into a sharp trot. Scotland play the first of their four warm-up matches against France in Nice three weeks today. Four warm-up internationals seem a bit like tempting fate to some of us, risk of serious injury rising with every game. True, of course, but injuries come in training too. The Wasps flanker Brad Shields has just been sent home from the England training-camp with a foot injury.

Scotland assistant coach Mike Blair. Picture: Bill Murray/SNS/SRU

Whether training camps and warm-up matches can do anything to solve the puzzle of Gregor Townsend’s team is perhaps doubtful. Regular readers of this column may be tired of one of my favourite quotes: “one day a rooster, the next a feather duster”, pronouncement on the vagaries of sporting fortune by Alan Jones, coach of the 1984 Grand Slam-winning Wallabies. Townsend’s Scotland can be both in the same match: shabby-looking feather duster in the first half at Twickenham, gorgeous rooster in the second. Perhaps Gregor and his coaches can find a way to leave the feather duster in a broom cupboard at Murrayfield, and ensure it’s the rooster who travels to Japan.

Like Scotland the Wallabies themselves can switch from feather duster to rooster and back again even in the same match. Both were in evidence when they lost to South Africa in Johannesburg last week. Scoring four tries to two makes it look as if the Springboks won comfortably, but their coach Rassie Erasmus said they were very lucky. So indeed they were. Australia threw away two tries, one when a pass was delayed until the recipient had overrun the ball-carrier, the other when the Australian wing knocked the ball on a yard from the try-line with no opponent near him. Then the same player bizarrely chose to join a maul, thus leaving an unguarded blind-side. “Thanks a lot”, the young Springbok scrum-half Herschel Jantjies must have thought as he scooted twenty yards unchallenged to score.

Lucky or not, Mr Erasmus can’t be too unhappy, for he had fielded what was not far from being South Africa’s second XV, a dozen players have already been sent to New Zealand for today’s match against the All Blacks.

Moreover it’s a rare match in which opposition mistakes don’t contribute to your victory, as honesty would compel every team that beat Scotland in this year’s Six Nations to confess.

The All Blacks themselves, admittedly at something a bit less than full-strength, had a touch of the feather duster about them against Argentina in Buenos Aires, might indeed have echoed Rassie Erasmus and admitted that they were more than a little lucky to win. Certainly, throughout the second-half the Pumas were the better and indeed the more enterprising side. Still, I doubt if the All Blacks’ coach, Steve Hanson, is at all worried. Early days yet, he might say, and it’s always good to have had your defence tested.

Defence… ah yes… we would like to think that it’s brilliant and imaginative attack that wins matches, and sometimes of course it is, but, as often as not tries are made possible by defensive errors, and, in general, a team that makes it very hard for their opponents to cross their try-line will come out on top. Wales were far from brilliant in this year’s Six Nations – indeed you might say that every other team in the tournament showed more attacking flair – but it was the Welsh who carried off the trophy and indeed won a Grand Slam. Huw Bennett, their strength-and- conditioning coach, claims that they are fitter than any other team. Perhaps they are, and certainly they have usually finished matches strongly, but organization has a lot to do with it as well, and the Welsh midfield seemed impenetrable – except in the first half of their opening match in Paris.

There’s an awful lot of rugby to be played before we get to Japan and the tournament kicks off in two months’ time. Indeed there is for most countries almost the equivalent of an international season of preliminary testing matches (a better description perhaps than the easy-sounding “warm-up” games). Even so, no matter what happens between now and then, New Zealand will start as favourites – which means that everyone will be looking for a chink in their armour.

Meanwhile Scotland’s position has been nicely summed-up by assistant coach Mike Blair, as sharp with a comment as he used to be breaking from a scrum or ruck: “Consistency is absolutely crucial for us. During the Six Nations we had moments of brilliance, but we’ve also had periods when we’ve almost fallen off a cliff.”

No spin there, just an honest assessment. Let’s keep it that way and our chances will be better.