Rory Darge reveals why trip to France has stood Scotland in such good stead

Rory Darge feels the full force of the French defence during Scotland's narrow defeat in Saint-Etienne.

Gregor Townsend’s side are one of the only contestants to have spent time in the host nation in the months leading up to the global showpiece, which gets under way in less than four weeks. The Scots stayed at their World Cup training base near Nice in late June, and they returned there last week for four days to further acclimatise and familiarise themselves with the facilities and surrounding area before travelling north to Saint-Etienne for Saturday’s agonising 30-27 defeat against Les Bleus. Darge believes their stints in the French heat will help them feel at ease when they fly back out to Nice on September 3 to step up preparations for their tournament opener against South Africa in Marseille a week later.

“It’s been huge in terms of our preparations, it’s been ideal,” said flanker Darge. “We’ve been in Nice before in the hotel that we’re going to be staying in at the World Cup, so it’s nice to get into the routine of it in terms of knowing what it looks like, getting the bus to training and back etc. We’ve been getting into the routine of what a match week will look like when we’re back out for the World Cup. The heat is a big factor as well so we’ve been trying to get used to that as much as we can.”

The Scots got an early flavour of what the atmosphere might be like in French stadiums throughout the World Cup as they encountered a partisan home support inside Stade Geoffroy-Guichard on Saturday. “It was a special atmosphere, unbelievable,” said Darge. “You couldn’t hear much in the warm-up and then the anthems, as always, were unbelievable. Even at the start of the game (when Scotland were on top), the atmosphere didn’t die away. It was special to play in. It definitely whets the appetite to come back out and play more games in stadiums like this at the World Cup. We’ll not be up against a home crowd like that (in the group games), but I’m sure the atmosphere at the games will still be special.”

Although the Scots were disappointed not to get a victory in searing Saturday-night heat in Saint-Etienne, they took immense encouragement from the way they went toe-to-toe with the world’s second-ranked team on their own patch. Scotland led 10-6 after half an hour, lost their way for a period just before and after the interval and then roared back from 27-10 down to level the match at 27-27 before succumbing to a late Thomas Ramos penalty.

“We were gutted we didn’t get a result but at the same time we had a much better performance in the first half (than in the match at home to the French the previous weekend),” said Darge. We talked a lot in the week building up to it about starting well. For a lot of the second half we were good as well, it was just that little period at the start of the second half when they got two quick tries. That five minutes at the start of the second is what we’ll look at most from the performance.”