Gavin Vaughan – one of the unsung heroes of Scotland’s back-room team – has defended the strategy of recruiting players from across the globe to bolster national team performances by pointing out that Sri Lanka have more registered players to call on.
The softly spoken Welshman’s official title is ‘Lead National Team Performance Analyst’ and that encompasses a wide range of responsibilities, which includes wading through endless hours of opposition video footage to help develop a successful game-plan for upcoming matches, and scouring the internet for Scottish-qualified talent in far flung corners of the globe who might be worth recruiting.
“We need to grow our own and we are growing our own – there are a lot of guys here who have come through the system,” explained Vaughan. “But we also have to be smart and look outside as well because there are more rugby players in Sri Lanka than there are in Scotland.”
According to World Rugby – the global game’s governing body – there were 46,050 registered players in Scotland and 59,509 in Sri Lanka at the last count in 2018. Meanwhile, heavyweights such as South Africa have 635,288 registered players and England have 355,153. Scotland are ranked 16th in the world in terms of player population,
“I’m always looking and chatting to different people,” added Vaughan. “So, that could mean cold calling someone or trying to track someone down who a friend of a friend has told me has got a Scottish mum or a Scottish dad or has even got a Scottish-sounding name.
“Some are successful, and some are not but I’m constantly on the lookout because we are a tiny rugby nation.”
The significance of this aspect of Vaughan’s job is highlighted by the fact that only 16 of the 33 players in Scotland’s World Cup squad learned their rugby inside Scotland. Five more – Johnny Matthews, Ewan Ashman, Hamish Watson, Ali Price and Cam Redpath – were involved from their teenage years in the Scottish Exiles [now known as SQ] programme. Meanwhile, the other 12 were recruited after they had already established themselves in the pro game elsewhere.
Scotland play their next World Cup pool match against Romania in Lille on Saturday looking for a bonus-point victory which would set up a win-or-bust clash for qualification to the knock-out stage against Ireland in Paris seven days later.
Romania’s No 13, Jason Tomane, is a good player,” said Vaughan. “He’s [Australian international] Joe Tomane’s brother, and Hinckley Vaovasa, the 10 who’s played a lot at 15, has been impressive in the first two rounds. He’s got great footwork and he could cause us some problems, especially the way they attack with him in the backfield.
“They’ve also got a couple of good young guys in their back three. We have to look out for them and switch on. A big thing for us after reviewing our Tongan game is being clinical for 80 minutes."
Vaughan, Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend and defence coach Steve Tandy were all part of the management team on the last Lions tour, to South Africa in 2021, and he believes that experience of working day-to-day with several Irish players who will face Scotland next Saturday can also help his plotting.
“There’s one or two [learnings], especially around some individuals, some technical stuff that we can hopefully dial into,” he said. “It was a great experience for me to go on that tour and get to know them personally and work with them in detail.
“You get to know what they need in their preparations, knowing what they are looking for in their defence and stuff like that. So, I’ll be dropping a few nuggets this week, for sure. Every little thing counts in these big games.
“So, the plans are well in place [for Ireland] and we’ve definitely got a few things up our sleeves. It’s going to be very tough. Obviously, we saw their result [against South Africa] at the weekend and they’re not the No 1 team in the world for nothing, but there are definitely opportunities and I think we did stress them in certain areas at Murrayfield [during the Six Nations], so we’ll be hoping to do the same in a couple of weeks.
“I think they are very consistent, and that grows with the confidence you get from winning trophies and titles. When it comes to the Ireland week, we know we have to be on every play, every moment and that’s something we’re drilling into the boys.”
