Six Nations: Greig Laidlaw hopes to emulate uncle

Scotland scrumhalf Greig Laidlaw wants to follow in the footsteps of his uncle Roy. Picture: SNS

It was, of course, a very different era. Scotland would go on to win the Grand Slam the following year, suggesting that they were at an altogether more advanced stage of their evolution as a team than the present side.

Even so, as they look forward to this Saturday’s game, the Scots could do with finding encouragement from any quarter. And, while current captain Greig Laidlaw does not see an exact parallel with that match in which his uncle Roy got on the score sheet, he knows that the determination to impose themselves on the game shown by the class of ’83 is the kind of attitude his own team need to show after their losses to France, Wales and Italy.

“I’ve talked to Roy about it in the past, but not specifically this week,” the Scotland No 9 said yesterday. “It’s a different group of players and they have their own bit of history. It’s up to us now to make our own bit of history, to go down there and be strong and have the mentality that we can impose our game on them, not worry what’s coming out of the other changing room.”

That distant match certainly contains more inspiration than does the recent past for the scrum-half, who was on the wrong end of a 20-0 humiliation by the English a year ago at Murrayfield.

“That was personally one of my worst games for Scotland, to be honest. I don’t think many of the boys played well that day for whatever reason. It was a bad day, and especially when you play England you want to do yourself proud – it’s the oldest game in the world and you want to do the jersey proud. We want to turn the result around if we can. We have to go in with the mindset to win the game.

“Any game’s ideal to bounce back. The history is brilliant, of course, and it’s great to be part of and would be brilliant to win. But whoever we were playing next it would be vitally important to win the game. It’s slightly more added spice because it’s England down there.”

Scotland are of course desperate for a win after those three defeats, the last of which, two weeks ago against Italy, was particularly demoralising. But, while spirits have been at a low ebb recently, the squad can take genuine encouragement from the fact that each of those three losses – like the ones in 1983 – has been narrow. France won by seven points in Paris, Wales and Italy by three at Murrayfield.

“I was looking at the first three games and it’s 13 points,” Laidlaw continued. “That’s all we’ve been beaten by. It’s not much.

“We’re not far away; I’m getting pretty sick of telling people that, I really am. It’s up to us as players to step up, go again and put in that performance. We’re all craving to get off the mark. We’ve got two massive games now and if we get something out of these games we’re in a much better position than we are at the minute.”

Ireland, Scotland’s last opponents, got the better of England in Dublin in the last round of fixtures, but Laidlaw knows that Stuart Lancaster’s team could be all the tougher to beat as a consequence of that result. “I’m expecting a big threat on their maul. They pride themselves on their lineout, scrum and their maul as well as putting a lot of emphasis on their defence.

“They get a lot of numbers into their front line. They try and squeeze teams in the opposition half and pick up a lot of penalties as well as getting their maul game going and look to kick to touch.

“They are good players and have a couple of players who give them that X factor and they’ve shown well in the tournament so far. But we have good players also for Scotland and I truly believe we can match them – and better them – if we turn up and play to the best of our ability.

“To win in a Scotland jersey you need to play to the best of your ability, and so far we haven’t done that. There have been glimpses, but we’ve just fallen short, so we need an 80-minute performance on Saturday.

“They’re not invincible. That’s definitely not the case. I believe they’re good players, but you look at Glasgow when they played Bath. Bath were going well in the Premiership but Glasgow beat them well at home and arguably could have won down there. It wasn’t really a Glasgow first team, they had a lot of injuries that day, and it probably was close to Bath’s first team in the second game.”

Earlier this week Scotland full-back Stuart Hogg was reported as saying that England did not respect his team. Former England captain Will Carling replied that respect has to be earned, and yesterday Laidlaw acknowledged the truth in that view.

“Respect’s got to be earned and that’s something we’ll be aiming to do on the weekend,” he said. “The England boys will respect us if we do a job on the field.”