Blair Kinghorn says Scotland have a point to prove against Tonga on Sunday after failing to score a single try – for the first time since November 2020 – against South Africa in their World Cup opener in Marseilles two weekends ago.
But he promised that the prospect of qualification for the knock-out stages coming down to points difference will not lure his team into the trap of chasing a high score without putting the groundwork in.
It is likely to become a points race if Ireland beat South Africa on Saturday night and Scotland win all three of their remaining pool matches against Tonga on Sunday night, Romania the following Saturday and Ireland the Saturday after that.
“It’s massive that we get our attacking clicking again because we were disappointed with the way we attacked against South Africa,” said Kinghorn. “We know how good our attack can be so it’s just about putting that on to the pitch and we’re confident we can do it.
“There will be opportunities against Tonga but we’re not looking too much at the bigger picture. Mainly we’re just focused on winning, because we know that if we attack as well as we can then the points will come.
"It’ll certainly be spoken about closer to the game or during half-time but I think the emphasis will be on sticking to our structures and being patient.
"There were a lot of errors in that game and we couldn’t really string together our phases. We pride ourselves on being able to go deep on phase count and that’s when we’ll really get at teams, so I think when you have a game plan and know how well you can attack and it’s not going well then people can get frustrated, which is what happened against South Africa.
“So, when we did our review we talked a lot about how you bounce back from frustration in a game because if you are frustrated for 80 minutes you are not concentrating on the job in hand. We’ve had a good look at ourselves and our mindset if things aren’t going our way, and how we then reset and get back to it.”
Still only 26, Kinghorn is set to win his 48th cap if selected against Tonga on Sunday, and after initially being deployed as a winger then as a stand-off, by national team head coach Gregor Townsend, he now has the opportunity to make the full-back berth his own following the retirement of Stuart Hogg at the start of the summer.
“I feel comfortable back there [at full-back],” he said. “I've got the ability to cover stand-off if needed, and I still train there occasionally so I can provide cover if the starting 10 goes down during a game, but I feel like full-back is my best suited position at the moment, and I feel like that's where I can offer the team my strengths.
“It has given me a different focus this pre-season, coming into the World Cup feeling like I can grab a starting jersey, and being able to wear 15 is something I don't want to let go of and something I don't take lightly. Every day is about trying to get better so that I hold on to that jersey. There's still a lot of competition in our squad so I've just got to keep training well and playing well, if selected.”
As a promising football player in his early teens, Kinghorn was in the youth programme at Hearts, but his decision to focus instead on football appears to have been vindicated by the fact he is now at his second World Cup with Scotland. “I don't actually think I was that good at football,” he smiles. “I was just a big lump at the back who was pretty fast and could header the ball. So far, it's been a good decision, but we'll never know for sure [how it would have turned out]. “My favourite Hearts player growing up was Rudi Skacel. I remember me and my dad going to the 2006 Scottish Cup final when they beat Gretna at Hampden which was a good day out. Gretna aren’t a team any more – but I was still there and we won!”
