Rory Darge reflects on first taste of Scotland captaincy and says there's room for improvement

Rory Darge captained Scotland for the first time in the win over Italy.

The 23-year-old flanker led Scotland to a 25-13 victory over the Italians at a soggy Scottish Gas Murrayfield and spoke as maturely as he performed on the pitch in his post-match press conference for someone so inexperienced in the role.

"It's a mixed bag,” reflected Darge on the display. “We had some really good stuff, especially in defence, loads of physicality and effort shown, but we didn't look after the ball sometimes. Obviously the conditions played a part, but I still think we could have done more to look after it.

“It's our first outing. We've tried to simulate it in training but I guess there's nothing really like it when you go out, especially at Murrayfield. There's a lot going on, but I thought we showed a lot of character. We were behind at half-time, but we showed loads of character and our defence was really good.”

Scotland had to deal with the slippery ball due to the rainfall in Edinburgh but Darge refused to use that as an excuse for some basic handling errors despite a lack of exposure recently to those conditions. "I don't think we've trained indoors this pre-season,” he continued. “But we've been lucky with the weather, we've not had rain all week until the warm-up. It's not an excuse. We've all played rugby for long enough and we've all played rugby in the rain before, having lived in Scotland for our whole life.”

Darge was something of a surprise selection to wear the armband. He previously skippered the under-20s but is not even the captain at Glasgow Warriors, his club. He was able to lead upon some of the more experienced players within the team for back-up. "When I had the captaincy at under-20s, the thing that I took from it was to focus on my performance, first and foremost,” Darge said of how he handled the honour. “I think I did that. And the vice captains, not just Chris [Harris] and Sam [Skinner], but Ali [Price} and Kyle Steyn, my captain at Glasgow, they told me they would support me throughout the week which really helped.”Asked if he addressed the team at half-time, when Scotland were trailing 6-5, Darge revealed: "I said we could bring more comms about what we were doing. We obviously touched on defence, we hadn't conceded a try up until that point, and looking after the ball, which is where we were going wrong, the contact area. That sort of stuff.”

While Darge impressed in his role, the man-of-the-match award was handed to stand-off Ben Healy in only his second start for his country – although he was stunned to receive the gong. "I'm a bit surprised, to be honest!” he exclaimed. “I made a lot of mistakes towards the end. A few of our boys dug in deep and came out with some big plays to get us across the line. Today is a step in the right direction. Pre-season was as tough as they come, so today was a reward."