Scotland's best poker star fears isolation as endless season enters final leg

It is the last leg of the Americas tour; the final fling of a seemingly never-ending season. But as well as marking the conclusion of a campaign, Scotland’s game against Uruguay on Saturday evening is above all a chance to cement the successes of the previous few weeks, in which 11 men have made their national debuts and three matches have been won with a dash of panache and a preponderance of professionalism.

Gregor Townsend’s team should make it four wins out of four in the Estadio Charrua in Montevideo, and we should see some more of that panache from the likes of Duhan van der Merwe, who needs one more try to claim sole ownership of the all-time national record he currently shares with Stuart Hogg. But another professional display will be the main thing the head coach is looking for, as he seeks further evidence of the enhanced squad depth which has been such a feature of the past few weeks.

Townsend gave 10 men their debuts against Canada - five from the start and five off the bench. To throw in so many untried players at once may have appeared foolhardy, but the former stand-off was proven correct as his team ran in 11 tries en route to a 73-12 win.

Max Williamson gets his hands on the ball against Canada.

A more experienced team was then fielded against the USA, in part in the knowledge that Scotland’s last win in Canada, in 2018, had been followed by a narrow but humiliating loss in Houston. A convincing 42-7 victory ensued.

Townsend rang the changes again for last week’s game against Chile, in which Edinburgh hooker Patrick Harrison became the 11th and last debutant of the summer. The squad betrayed signs of unfamiliarity with each other early on, but in the end they won 52-11, proving fitter and stronger than their spirited opponents.

This week, for a game which is taking place outside of the international window, the coach has had a smaller squad from which to choose, all of them being Glasgow or Edinburgh players. Ten of the matchday 23 have caps tallies that are still in single figures, but some of those - Stafford McDowall with four, for example, or Kyle Rowe with six - have a maturity well beyond what those numbers might suggest.

Only three tour debutants remain for this last game – Harrison and Warriors forwards Gregor Brown and Max Williamson – but it has become clear over the past month that the competition for places in the squad has increased considerably. The attritional nature of the game makes it unlikely that all 11 new boys will go on to accumulate high numbers of caps, and yet all the same, many have already done enough to suggest that they can become Test regulars.

Head coach Gregor Townsend will be eyeing another Scotland win.

Take Williamson, for example. Just eight months ago the 21-year-old lock had not even played for Glasgow. Now, only a month after winning the URC with his club, he is about to win his fourth cap, and is the only member of the starting line-up who will have played in all four games.

Asked how he would have reacted if he had been told last autumn that he was on the verge of making such a rapid rise, Williamson said: “I probably would have laughed. It has been pretty surreal, to be honest. Obviously, from making my Glasgow debut this season to where I am now has been quite a journey for me. I’ve loved all of it so far – it’s been fantastic.

“Especially for a lot of us young guys, it’s been a great opportunity to learn from some of the older players, which is probably something you wouldn’t usually get. For me specially it’s just been massive to see how the environment runs and just to learn off everyone.”

If his Warriors team-mate Scott Cummings is to be believed, Williamson is the best poker player in the squad. But the man himself refuses to confirm it. “We've been playing a lot and it's been fairly even,” he said. “That day when Scott spoke, I'd won the night before, but I'd say it has been fairly balanced. If I tell people I’m good at it, they'll stop playing with me.”

Williamson no longer has to tell people he is good at rugby: the evidence is there for the world to see. He and his team-mates will face the toughest outing of the tour this evening against opponents who are ranked 17th in the world to Scotland’s sixth, but they should still have the power and perseverance to rack up that fourth and final victory before heading home for a well-earned rest.