For reasons I don’t really want to go into I ended up watching the Scotland v Fiji match in a pub in Edinburgh.
An England fan was sitting near us. You could guess his loyalties from the England shirt he was wearing and the fact that his poor wee face was crestfallen when the All Blacks scored that late try and conversation to win at Twickenham.
He was also not a member of the ‘I am English but I support Scotland when they are playing anybody else’ club. Indeed his face got more torn by the minute as Scotland ran in try after try to comfortably beat Fiji, a result I absolutely did not predict.
The English fan lost the plot altogether when Duhan van der Merwe sauntered over for his try to claim back his record as Scotland’s leading try scorer. Loudly he sneered that Scotland were “cheats” for playing the big man because he was South African. In bygone days I would have remonstrated with the mouthy chap with extreme prejudice and issued him a biff on the nose, but I am somewhat more civilised these days and made my point verbally, loudly exclaiming: “Billy Vunipola! Maku Vunipola! Manu Tuilagi!”
My point hit home and the English fan didn’t speak a word from then on.
Like van der Merwe, all three of those great players qualified to play for their adopted country on residency grounds, but that encounter with the idiot kind got me thinking about what would happen if national coaches were restricted to picking home bred, home based players only.
It’s a fact that all the major rugby nations have at one time or another selected men who were not born in that country, and the current rules on eligibility state you must have a family connection - but no further back than grandparents - or have been resident in the adopted country for five consecutive years or ten cumulatively.
I know a lot of people don’t like it that Scotland has to import players, but look what the likes of WP Nel, Pierre Schoeman, Jack Dempsey, Sean Maitland, and van der Merwe have done for us. The latest ‘import’ to be capped was Tom Jordan, the New Zealander who plays for Glasgow Warriors and who had a memorable debut against Fiji. Though he came on as a replacement and played at full back, he even made the TNT Sports Team of the Week which had an all Scottish back line. On Saturday’s showing he will be in the squad for years to come.
The fact is that Scotland does not have the player resources that other nations possess, and we need imports. Would we have beaten Fiji without them? I like to think so.
Much was made of the fact that with the game being outside the international window, Fiji were missing terrific European-based players such as former captain Waisea Nayacalevu (Sale Sharks), and France-based Josua Tuisova (Racing 92) and Semi Radradra (Lyon). Head coach Mick Byrne did not complain, however, not least because 17 of his 23-man squad were involved in Fiji’s superb win in the Asahi Super Dry Pacific Nations Cup back in September.
Don’t forget Scotland were missing Finn Russell, Ben White and Blair Kinghorn, and I think they would have started against Fiji and will do so against South Africa.
The world champions will be a whole different test from the Fijians but Glasgow Warriors showed last season that Scottish teams can perform well in South Africa and home advantage might give Scotland an edge. It certainly did against Fiji who I thought were taken aback by the sheer noise of the sell-out Murrayfield crowd.
Scotland outplayed them in every department, but Fiji did manage three tries and against South Africa, Scotland must keep mistakes and indiscipline to a bare minimum as the Spingboks will punish every error. It’s what they do.
Sadly we will have to play without Darcy Graham whose head injury will keep him out this weekend. After that sparkling four try performance against Fiji, he’ll be a big miss, but Scotland’s strength in depth is now more obvious than ever.
The Springboks are not unbeatable – pretty damn close to it, but we can only hope they have an off day and every Scot brings their A plus game to Murrayfield.
Now to some local news. There’s a big election coming up – no not that one as it’s done and dusted, we trust – but the election for the new Vice-President of the SRU. Tomorrow (Thursday) night will see candidates John Brown and Hazel Swankie present their cases to the Glasgow North clubs at Scotstoun Stadium.
The meeting has been thrown open to all clubs in the Glasgow area and it goes without saying that includes women’s sections. It starts at 7pm and I hope as many clubs as possible will attend as this is a very important election for the SRU.
