New captain Rory Lawson looks for Scotland to be warriors

THERE has been much talk among Scotland players this week of "honesty" and taking responsibility, with a searing heat-to-heart session on Monday having brought harsh words, but Rory Lawson acknowledged yesterday that the only way for the players to make amends lay in producing a warrior- like performance against South Africa on Saturday.

• Scott MacLeod, left, and Chris Paterson are both back in the Scotland 22 for Saturday's Test against South Africa, MacLeod in the second row and Paterson on the bench. Picture: Ian Rutherford

Lawson has been growing into the captain's role at Gloucester and with Scotland as part of a leadership group under Andy Robinson, standing in as skipper at the end of the heroic victory over Australia last November and in Argentina. But, having spent the 80 minutes of last week's game in the West Stand coaching box with Robinson and the management team, on account of a hand injury, he now has a more acute picture of how poor his team-mates were against the All Blacks, and how frustrated it made the coaches.

Delighted to be taking over from Mike Blair as Scotland captain, the nation's 111th Test skipper, Lawson insisted that as honoured as he felt it would mean little if the team did not regain pride this week and win.

He said: "It's a childhood dream (to captain Scotland] and one that I'm hugely honoured to be given the chance to fulfil. One of my first experiences at Murrayfield was the 1990 Grand Slam game and of David Sole leading the team out. I don't have any thoughts of walking out like he did, but it will still be hugely emotional. For me, though, it's about leading the team to a victory. The guys who went out at the weekend have had a good hard look at themselves. Everyone in the squad is honest about performances. I feel like I was directly involved - a strength of the squad is that there is a real togetherness and feeling that across the board we're all accountable for what happens on the weekend. The fire in the belly and the performance is something I feel should be there week in and week out. When you are playing against the No 1 side in the world and you are a few scores down it's got to be difficult to keep motivating yourself to go again and again and again, but that's what I'll ask for this weekend. A key thing for me is that we have 22 guys who are warriors, looking to defend and attack with vigour throughout the game, irrespective of the scoreline."

Asked if he felt Scotland had been over-awed by the All Blacks, he responded: "We got things wrong at the weekend, but I don't feel we were over-awed. We gave them too much respect in defence because the way we defended wasn't the way we are coached to defend.You have to be at your very best when you play the No 1 side in the world and we weren't. That's the harsh reality. We were a long way off the performance we needed to compete against the best side in the world.

"The performances at the weekend weren't acceptable. We are an honest bunch and we set our standards an awful lot higher than that. Guys have looked at the goals they set for the game and realise that they were a long way off them and that things need to change.

"But you don't become a bad team overnight and we're fully aware that across the last six months we've proved what we can do when we go out and put in a performance. We have to use the emotions and disappointment from the weekend to fuel the fire going in against South Africa."

The thrashing on Saturday was a lesson in what happens when a team like Scotland, playing its first international in five months, comes up against the world's best with 11 Test matches under their belts in five months, and fails to hit its straps straight away. But Robinson has turned to two straight-talking performers to help turn it around.

Nathan Hines and Scott MacLeod have rarely had poor displays for Scotland, both being at the heart of momentous Scots wins over the past decade. They are two of the best ball-playing forwards in the Scotland team, and their ability to work with Richie Gray will be crucial in providing a better lineout platform and disrupting the vaunted Boks lineout trio of Victor Matfield, Bakkies Botha and Juan Smith.

They also bring a straightforward approach, in mind and deed. Hines is excited at starting in a new position for Scotland a week shy of his 34th birthday - he started out in rugby as a back row - and is typically unfazed by it. His ability to read a game also comes through in his analysis of last week's defeat.

"Graham Steadman (defence coach] has a defensive system that we all do and we weren't doing that system at the weekend," Hines said of the first-half display. "We were just doing bits of whatever we wanted, caused by the pace and intensity probably. New Zealand are the masters at the breakdown, and we put three or four guys in and they had one, sometimes none, and they end up with three or four guys attacking one out wide. And it meant that pretty much every time they got through they scored.

"When the pace of the game is like that, you have to start thinking a breakdown ahead, and we got caught short there. We were too lateral in the first half and nobody said 'let's tuck it under the arm, go forward and take these guys on' and I think if we'd done that a bit more we'd have got more change. They just went wide and closed us down."

When Hines entered the fray at half-time, he duly did that, which is why he has been restored this week.His first meeting with the Springboks was a substitute appearance at the end of the 2002 win at Murrayfield, in only his fifth cap, and he has faced them seven times since, coming within inches of scoring what would have been a match-winning try in Durban in 2003.

"Against the Boks you've got to be physical," he said. "They are the most physical team in world rugby. Greig Laidlaw said to me that that was the hardest game he'd played at the weekend, and I just said 'wait 'til this weekend'.

"I like playing against South Africa, Bakkies and Victor. They haven't played however many (59] Tests together by chance - they are the best pair in the world and complement each other well. They are tough campaigners, and play rugby how I like to play it - bit of chirping, and when the whistle blows it's all forgotten and shake hands.

"It's just tough rugby. It's not complicated, just tough, and that's something we have to get our heads around; the hardest things are often the simplest things. We've had more success against them - beaten them in 2002 and been close many times - but if we play like we played against New Zealand, or like that against any team in the world, we'll lose.

"They're not any easier or harder (than New Zealand], just different. The important thing for us this weekend is to look after our own backyard and try to shut them down."