His first taste of international captaincy may be only two days away, but Chris Cusiter is looking and sounding incredibly relaxed about the pressure being heaped on him since he became part of Scotland’s dual captaincy experiment. Possibly, he admits, he has been helped by winning the race for the starting position, but his confidence has also been boosted by the depth of experience around him.
“Being named as captain and as the starting No 9 is a big thing,” he said yesterday. “I haven’t started for Scotland since the World Cup in 2007, so to get the start is a big thing and it’s a huge honour to be the run-on captain, for myself, my family and my friends. I take the responsibility very seriously, and I’ve enjoyed it so far.
“Ultimately, it’s about Scotland winning, and everything we have been doing for the past two weeks has been geared to that.
“It has possibly been harder for Mike [Blair, the other joint captain and his scrum half rival] as he won’t be starting — I’m sure it would be the same for me in the reverse situation. He has helped me out a lot, though. It’s a new thing for me to captain the side and Mike has given me a lot of help, as have the other guys like Al Strokosch, Jason White and Phil Godman.”
To have not just recovered his position in the team but also to have captured the captaincy for Andy Robinson’s first game in charge from the player who the coach made his club captain when he was in charge at Edinburgh, is a considerable coup. It fully justifies Cusiter’s decision last summer to return from Perpignan in France to play his rugby in Scotland.
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“It was part of my thinking that I did miss playing and starting for Scotland,” he said. “I went to France for a new experience and I got that, I feel I’m a better player. I love playing for Glasgow and I love living in Scotland again. One of the pros about coming back was the chance to be involved in games like Saturday’s [against Fiji] so to get a start in the first game of the season is a huge honour. I feel I deserve this opportunity and I intend to take it. Last season is gone; this is a new season and I’m looking forward to it.”
In fact it has been anything but plain sailing for the new Scotland captain, who has had to contend with a couple of niggling injuries plus a debilitating bout of flu already this season, but far from expecting any sort of allowances or credit, he just shrugs off the run of bad luck.
“The way my career has gone is that I’ve had ups and downs,” he said. “That’s the way I expect it to go from now until I retire. You deal with injuries when they come and I’ve had a good run without any serious injuries for a while, I’m enjoying my rugby. Whatever comes will happen but I don’t think the game owes me anything.”
The reality is that he has been picked on form. Blair has not been as dominant this season as he was a year ago, while Cusiter’s influence has been such that, with only one exception, his club team have won the matches in which he played a full role, and lost the ones for which he was unavailable. It’s an unanswerable case.
Similar form considerations have dominated most of Robinson’s selections for the Murrayfield game, though there is only one new cap in the side, Alex Grove, the centre, so the new captain is also feeling confident about the team’s prospects.
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“The guys who were involved at the last World Cup have an extra couple of years of experience, they are playing good rugby and the pro teams are getting good results. A couple of new guys are coming into the side too, “ he said. “Alex Grove hasn’t played before, but the level he plays at in the Guinness Premiership [with Worcester] means that it’s not a massive step-up. There’s real competition in all positions and good professionalism there.”