The four big calls Gregor Townsend has to make ahead of Scotland's Rugby World Cup squad announcement

Gregor Townsend will name his Scotland squad for the 2023 Rugby World Cup on Wednesday and is not expected to spring many surprises with his 33-man selection.

Gregor Townsend during a Scotland training session at Scottish Gas Murrayfield earlier this month. The coach will name his World Cup squad on Wednesday. (Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group)

The national head coach has already cut four players from his 41-strong training squad, with Adam Hastings, Kyle Rowe, Cameron Henderson and Stafford McDowall all dropping out last weekend. A further four will be trimmed and Townsend is expected to drop a scrum-half, a hooker, a prop and a back-rower.

Townsend indicated last week that he would likely take three scrum-halves to the tournament in France and Ben White, Ali Price and George Horne look to be the trio who will travel, which spells bad news for the versatile Jamie Dobie who is expected to miss out. The only complication is the ankle injury sustained by White in the home win over France on August 5 but Townsend is confident the Toulon player will recover in time.

The position of hooker is likely to present the coach with his biggest selection headache. George Turner cemented his status as first choice with a fine performance in the narrow away defeat by France at the weekend. Townsend is expected to take two more hookers to the World Cup and it’s a tough choice as to who misses out from Stuart McInally, Ewan Ashman and Dave Cherry.

The call on prop looks to be more straightforward, with one of the tightheads likely to be dropped. Zander Fagerson and WP Nel are certainties to go, so it’s set to come down to a battle between Javan Sebastian and Murphy Walker. Sebastian’s selection for the France game in Saint-Etienne suggests he is in pole position.

Back row has been a position of strength for Scotland but there are seven currently in the training squad. That’s set to be cut to six and the most likely player to miss out is Josh Bayliss who was not in Townsend’s original 41-man selection but was brought in when Andy Christie had to withdraw with injury. Bayliss has played well off the bench in the warm-ups, scoring a try against Italy, but it will be difficult for him to force his way in ahead of Jamie Ritchie, Rory Darge, Jack Dempsey, Matt Fagerson and Hamish Watson. It could come down to a straight shoot-out with Luke Crosbie who has not seen any action since the Italy game.

Scotland’s form in the build-up to the tournament has been impressive and although they lost 30-27 to France in Saint-Etienne on Saturday night, there was plenty in the performance to generate optimism ahead of their World Cup opener against South Africa in Marseille on September 10. Prior to the game in Saint-Etienne the Scots enjoyed home wins over Italy and France and they will play Georgia at Murrayfield on August 26 in their final warm-up game.

The squad is expected to travel to France on September 3, giving them a week to acclimatise for the match against the Springboks. There is a fortnight between Scotland’s first two games in Pool B as they do not face Tonga until September 24, in Nice. The Scots then travel north to Lille to play Romania on September 30 before completing their group matches against Ireland at the Stade de France in Paris on October 7.