'The mind is buzzing' - Jamie Ritchie on coping with the demands of captaining Edinburgh and Scotland

After being appointed captain of Edinburgh and then Scotland in quick succession in the autumn, Jamie Ritchie has had a pretty hectic and demanding season so far.

Jamie Ritchie has had a demanding year after being named captain of both Edinburgh and Scotland. (Photo by Ross Parker / SNS Group)

But, as he looks forward to his club’s first home Champions Cup game for two years on Saturday, the 26-year-old is confident he is in a good place mentally and physically to deal with that and subsequent challenges.

What is more, he is equally convinced that the Edinburgh squad as a whole are ready for a demanding encounter with Castres. The excitement of returning to European rugby’s premier tournament after a season in the Challenge Cup is part of the reason for that, as is the encouraging performance in the narrow defeat at Saracens last Sunday.

“I got the week off after the autumn, which was a chance to switch off physically, so the body feels OK,” explained Ritchie, who has two young children. “The mind is pretty buzzing. I'm quite good at switching off. I've been doing this for a wee while now.

“I have certain things I like to do that help me to get away from it - getting home is a natural one for that, because you don't have time to think about anything else. The times I don't think about rugby is when they [the children] are running about at home. My wife is great at letting me have some time if I need it.

“There's a company near Edinburgh Airport called Float Philosophy that I like to get down to. I use the float pods there and take an hour. You listen to music for the first 10 minutes and then it switches off and you're in there for an hour.”

A serene 60-minute spell in a flotation tank may seem a world away from the hurly burly of 80 minutes on a rugby pitch, but the reality is that a certain amount of calmness and composure is essential during every sporting contest, no matter how manic it may be at times. And, as he looked ahead to the Pool A game against Castres, Ritchie insisted that his team had every right to approach the match in a self-confident frame of mind. Edinburgh may not have got the result they were looking for against Saracens, but the captain believes that most aspects of their performance functioned well, and that the errors can be rectified with relative ease.

“Overall, we're pretty happy,” he said of the 30-26 defeat at the StoneX Stadium in north London. “It was a consistent enough performance for 80 minutes. There were bits there we would want to improve on, but that's the same in every game.

“We had a really positive meeting about those bits. Most of it is in our control. Around the lineout there were two call errors - one we didn't hear and one where we just got it wrong. I'm confident we can take the learnings from that and they are quite easy fixes. It is something to build on.

“Coming out of the URC and getting into Europe is a bit of a change of dynamic. Everyone's buzzing about being back up at the top table in Europe. It doesn't take too much to motivate them. It will certainly be a physical challenge, but one we are looking forward to.”