Interview: Chris Cusiter, Glasgow Warriors and Scotland international

SCOTLAND’S sob story endures. Four games without a try, but that’s just the latest. Wait until you hear the full tale.

Andy Robinson has been in charge for 25 Tests and his team has failed to cross the opposition line in 14 of them. Under Robinson, Scotland have lost eight Tests by seven points or fewer, a run of agonising near-misses that is only matched by, well, England when, er, Robinson was their coach. With England, Robinson lost eight Tests by, yes, seven points or fewer. Ever the nearly man, he has bounced from one international hard-luck yarn to another.

We are like broken records in Scotland’s rugby world. All we talk about is the try drought. If an outsider arrived, he’d wonder if we were robots programmed to ask the same questions over and over. “Why can’t you score?” “Whose fault is it?” “Can you fix it?” “When?”

Scrum-half Chris Cusiter sits down to talk and you can sense by the half-smile on his face that he knows what the questioning is going to be about. In the moment, he would probably mortgage the house and all its contents on the the opening gambit being about Scotland’s continuing desperation in front of their opponent’s sticks.

And here it comes: “Fed up with being asked about the lack of tries, Chris?” Bingo!

Listen, what else is there to talk about? There’s no other show in town. It’s rugby’s equivalent of The Mousetrap, but at least in the play we know whodunnit. Who’s going to do it for Scotland? It’s a mystery that just carries on and carries on.

“It’s really frustrating,” says Cusiter. “There are opportunities where we should have scored. A lot of the games we’ve played were really close and one try would have swung it in our favour. Looking back on the video [of the England game] I think Greig Laidlaw’s was a try. It was tight, but he got pressure on it. We need one of these things to go our way to go from narrow losses to narrow wins. But it’s happening too many times.

“I remember we were in this situation a couple of years ago. We played France and didn’t score any tries [Six Nations of 2010], and then we went to the Millennium [Stadium] and scored some [but still blew victory at the death]. When it comes it seems so easy and I genuinely believe we’re close. But we have to score them. If we’re going to win games we have to score tries. I was watching the Ireland and Wales game. Wales got themselves into good situations, but then what they came up with was a sublime bit of skill for a couple of tries. There was a great offload from Rhys Priestland. They had maybe a five-on-three but it was a great bit of skill to finish that off. Then George North made a great run and then a great offload.

“Every team has patterns, and they work to an extent, but you usually need a bit of individual brilliance or skill. That’s what Wales did last weekend. That’s what you need to do to score tries. Sometimes you can break teams down or use a clever kick, but sometimes you need a little bit of magic.”

Magic? Get the boy Dynamo in the camp, the trickster off the telly, the fella who can walk through windows and pull cards out of his shoe. He makes the impossible possible. Have him in for a session and let him bend some minds. Too late for this week, though.

Given that he made his debut in Cardiff away back in 2004, Cusiter has been around long enough to know that, with each passing game, the problem grows ever greater. Not just in the minds of the Scottish players but in the mentality of those they face. Wales won’t say it openly, but, privately, they’ll be thinking that, if they defend competently this afternoon, then they shouldn’t concede a try and, if they don’t concede a try then, with their own firepower, they will be certain of winning the match. Right?

“I don’t know what to say to that. Yes, I suppose so. But they will also understand that we are capable of scoring tries. We’ve scored against them in the past and we can score against them on Sunday. I’d love it for them to be complacent and say we can’t attack. But I don’t think it will happen. Teams do work hard in defence against us, but we’re not quite putting them away. We can talk until we’re blue in the face about it but, if we had executed a little bit better on Saturday, we would have scored tries. As I said, I think Greig did score.”

The thing about Scotland is that, individually, they’re good players, there is excellence in the team, but no killer instinct, nobody to make the key play that unlocks a defence. Cusiter sees hope in a changing guard. “The [new] guys who are involved are not lacking in confidence at all. If they come off the bench it’s an amazing place to get a first cap.

“They’ve handled big games this year. They’re very young, Hoggy [Stuart Hogg] especially, but he’s got the full package as far as I’m concerned. It will be great to see him and Duncy [Duncan Weir] come off the bench at some point. Also Ed Kalman, who has been playing well. It’s great for them to get an opportunity down there.Hoggy’s got that ability to make things happen. He hasn’t played an international yet, but I’m sure he’ll get a run and a lot more in the future. He has everything he needs to perform at international level – speed, ability, skill-set. He’s an exciting player. There’s no pressure on him. He’s 19, he’s been playing well, he’s going to get a chance off the bench.

“Greig [Laidlaw] is very good at putting other runners into space. He’s very clever, he’s got the skill-set and he sparks other players. He’s experienced. He’s been running the show at Edinburgh. He doesn’t have a huge number of caps but I’m in no doubt that he’s got the temperament for this sort of occasion.”

It’s Wales they’re up against, though. They beat Ireland despite having a load of injuries. They scored tries that were a mix of thunderous physicality and beautiful dexterity. They are overwhelming favourites.

“Their backline is rather large,” says Cusiter, with a smile. “Jamie Roberts, George North and guys like that. But we’ve got some big guys in our team as well, especially in the pack, like Jim Hamilton, Richie Gray and Dave Denton. We’ll play a different style of game from them. They are quite structured in what they do, but I wouldn’t want to use the world predictable because, although you know what they are going to do, it’s not any easier to stop them. They are such amazing athletes. Yeah, they scored some good tries. They’ll probably ask our defence more questions than England did.”

Scotland’s defence is normally decent, it’s the attack that kills them. We await the small mercy of a try, but more than that, we await the glory of victory. It’s been too long. Cusiter says: “I understand that people are frustrated. We are really frustrated too. Nobody was more disappointed than we were after the game on Saturday, especially as we have been here before. Being beaten by England in a game you feel you should have won, that happened just a few months ago at the World Cup.

“Going down to Wales is a huge ask, but we really should have won down there two years ago and we really should have beaten England on Saturday and at the World Cup. I firmly believe that we’ll start winning sooner rather than later – but we could really do with starting that now.”

The tries have to come today. Somehow.