Duncan Smith: Shabby treatment of Finn Russell damages Lions brand

Finn Russell joins a group of friends following his Lions appearance yesterday, but his debut was a brief one. Picture: David Gibson/Fotosport.

Another part of him may be frustrated that he only got a few minutes on the pitch in the 31-31 draw with the Hurricanes in Wellington as a brief head injury assessment replacement for Welsh starter Dan Biggar. If he isn’t, then plenty of Scottish rugby supporters will be about a shambolic and scandalous piece of mismanagement by Lions head coach Warren Gatland.

PG Wodehouse famously quipped that “it has never been hard to tell the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine”. There is a kernel of truth in that and, at times, we can as a nation be a bit chippy, but that is not to say that sometimes a sense of grievance is justified.

There has been a rumbling sense of injustice ever since Gatland named his initial 41-man squad, in which he found only two spaces for Scots in the shape of Stuart Hogg and Tommy Seymour.

On the day of the squad announcement the Scottish rugby press gathered at Murrayfield and spoke to a number of former Lions. Ian “Mighty Mouse” McLauchlan didn’t pull his punches when he said: “Gatland doesn’t exactly have a good track record in liking people from Scotland. He doesn’t come here, does he? And he doesn’t know the names of Scottish players.”

Greig Laidlaw was drafted in when Ben Youngs withdrew for family reasons and Hogg subsequently departed after a facial injury against the Crusaders. Gatland pulled Russell and prop Allan Dell from the Scotland tour as injury cover, along with four Welsh players, keeping them out of the defeat in Fiji, but both have only been employed in temporary cameo roles in the past two midweek games. That is now likely to be the sum total of their involvement in the tour, with only the second and third Tests left to play.

While not being privy to the conversation Gregor Townsend had with Gatland before the call-ups of Russell and Dell, it is hard to imagine the new Scotland coach is happy about releasing the pair to collect splinters on the subs’ bench.

It meant that Townsend had to field Peter Horne, who is more used to playing centre, at stand-off in the final game of the summer tour, which ended in a 27-22 defeat in Fiji. Full-back Ruaridh Jackson slotted in at No 10 during that Suva Test, which robbed Townsend of a perfect hat-trick start to his Scotland tenure following the wins over Italy in Singapore and a famous triumph over the Wallabies in Sydney. The fact that Dell got to experience a few minutes in the red jersey is a fantastic achievement for someone who, if Al Dickinson was fully fit, would be battling for an Edinburgh start. Russell, though, has been at the heart of the recent Scotland resurgence, in which Vern Cotter’s side won three games in this year’s Six Nations, including victories over Ireland and Wales.

Scotland’s representation has been low for the past four tours but that reflected the poor performances of the national team. This time there are genuine grounds for what appears to be, as McLauchlan hinted back in April, an anti-Scottish perception ingrained in the management and selection process. The 61-21 loss at Twickenham in the Six Nations, as well as Glasgow’s meek showing against Saracens in the European Champions Cup quarter-final, appears to have cemented Gatland’s belief that several key Scots weren’t up to the demands of going toe to toe against the All Blacks on their own patch.

Russell didn’t cover himself in glory that afternoon at Twickenham earlier in the year but he is a young, talented prospect who deserved a leap of faith that Gatland was clearly unable to contemplate. Despite an indifferent couple of years since his excellent 2015 World Cup, Biggar was preferred in the third stand-off spot as the Wales coach reverted to those he knows best.

The coach appears to have been rattled by suggestions that his decision to call up the Scots duo and Welsh quartet somehow “demeaned” the Lions jersey. That has come mainly from the English media, who dubbed the late arrivals as the “geographical six” as the Scottish and Welsh summer tours were more conveniently located than English contenders who were in Argentina. England coach Eddie Jones also had a pop, saying call-ups should be “on merit not geographical proximity”.

Gatland may claim to not “give a toss” about being portrayed as a clown on the front of Kiwi newspapers, but he has clearly been affected by these comments and weakly folded. Injury call-ups have been part and parcel of Lions tours for many years now. Drafting in Russell, Dell and Co didn’t devalue the jersey but treating them as barely wanted benchwarmers certainly has further damaged a Lions brand in which many Scots are, understandably, fast losing interest.