Darcy Graham bounced off the Scotland bench on Sunday night and provided a wonderful final flourish to his team’s 45-17 win over Tonga in Nice, nipping in from his wing to take a short pass off George Horne and then weaving past three helpless tacklers on a 60-yard dash to the line, taking his international try tally to 20 in 37 matches.
He’s not the type of character who ever needs any extra motivation, but the fact that Duhan van der Merwe – his chief rival in the race to beat Stuart Hogg’s Scotland try record of 27 – had already claimed his 21st try earlier in the match had not gone unnoticed by the little winger.
“I have to keep Duhan humble, don’t I!” joked Graham after the game. “Steyn-o [Kyle Steyn] is the dark horse. He’s creeping up behind us very quickly [having scored his 10th try in just 14 matches].
“I was obviously disappointed not to start tonight but Kyle is putting me under a huge amount of pressure for the 14 jersey,” he continued. “It’s good, it's needed, it pushes me on to be better which is how I will improve my game – and I’m doing the same for him.”
From a team perspective, it can’t do any harm to have so many players in such fine try-scoring form as they look ahead to their next World Cup assignment against Romania in Lille this Saturday night, knowing that points differential could become the deciding factor in who out of Scotland, Ireland and South Africa progresses to the knock-out stages of this World Cup.
“It could come down to that, and we know that, so it was disappointing to leave four or five tries out there by my reckoning against Tonga,” Graham added. “There were times in this game when if we had just gone an extra phase we would probably have been walking over in the corner, so I think we just have to get that balance right between going direct and earning the right to go wide.
“So, that was a bit frustrating but that’s it done and we’re onto the next challenge, which is Romania with a six-day turnaround. We’ll look at that game tonight and go again next week.”
Head coach Gregor Townsend is likely to rest and protect several of his frontline players against Romania, but with only five back-three players in the squad, at least one of Graham, van der Merwe or Steyn is almost certain to start.
