Darcy Graham emerges as worrying injury concern as Scotland await South Africa visit

A four-try salvo from Darcy Graham brought warm words of praise from Gregor Townsend after a record 57-17 victory over Fiji but the Scotland coach is now sweating on the winger’s availability for next weekend’s match against South Africa.

Graham, playing for the national side for the first time since last year’s World Cup, was outstanding in the opening match of the Autumn Nations Series at Murrayfield. However, he failed an initial head injury assessment (HIA) and had to come off during the second half after scoring his fourth try. He will be assessed further but now faces an anxious few days ahead of the visit of the world champions to Edinburgh next Sunday.

“I think he failed HIA 1, so we’ll now have to wait and see [the result of] HIA 2,” said Townsend. “If he passes that then he’ll have an HIA 3 in two days’ time. So I think the initial HIA was failed, that's why he didn't come back on the field.”

Scotland's Darcy Graham scored four tries in the 57-17 win over Fiji. | SNS Group

Graham’s four-timer drew him level with Duhan van der Merwe as Scotland’s all-time try-scorer on 28 but van der Merwe hit back with a try of his own later in the game to move on to 29. Townsend, who was delighted to see Graham return after a run of injuries, said it was a privilege to witness “living history”.

“They’re not driving each other on and trying to look for tries, they’re doing the right thing for their team,” Townsend said of his two wingers. “I thought Duhan did a lot of work to set up other people, his kick chase was very good.

“He obviously could have scored another one near the end [which was disallowed for a foot in touch] and their tries are often scored by the work of other people too. So it’s fantastic that we’ve got this living history, that we’ve got two players that have still got a lot of rugby ahead of them that are setting try-scoring records.

“I think Ian Smith from the 1920s had held that record for so many years, but now we’re seeing it broken every game or every other game that those two are playing

“Darcy scores different types of tries. His angles of running before he gets the ball are very hard to pick up. One of the tries, a little switch play with the nine, was evidence of that. His angles of running when he gets the ball and his strength to get out of tackles is up there with the best in the world.”

Watching Darcy Graham and Duhan van der Merwe chase the Scotland try record is 'living history' said Gregor Townsend. | SNS Group / SRU

Scotland’s other tries came from Huw Jones (two) and Kyle Rowe. Unfortunately for Rowe, he had to come off with a hamstring injury just before half-time and will almost certainly miss the South Africa game and may even struggle to be fit for the later autumn Tests against Portugal and Australia.

“He’s obviously upset because he’ll be thinking that he might be missing the next few weeks,” said Townsend. “He felt his hamstring, so he'll know his own body. We hope it won’t be anything serious but you don’t know until you get scan results. He tried to continue, was that a good sign? I don't know.”

Zander Fagerson was able to play after being a doubt before kick-off because his wife Yasmine is due to give birth to twins

“Nothing's happened yet,” said Townsend. “He'll be back with Yasmin and the family, so we hope everything goes smoothly over the next couple of days.”