IT TAKES a brave coach to change a winning team, and after a performance of the dynamic quality produced by Scotland in gaining their first win over France in seven years, Frank Hadden, the national coach, must have been tempted to stick with the same unit that did the job so spectacularly on Sunday.
Instead, he has opted for change, Scott Lawson coming in for his first RBS Six Nations Championship start at hooker, with Dougie Hall paying the price and dropping out of the 22 altogether.
That means that Ross Ford, the 21-year-old Borders hooker, is almost certain to win his second cap, after experiencing a few seconds of international action 18 months ago when he was brought on against Australia four minutes into second-half injury time.
Marcus Di Rollo, the centre, is expected to be fit for the game despite coming off in the first half against France with a tweaked thigh muscle. Di Rollo said yesterday that though he has not trained since, the injury is getting better all the time and unless there is a sudden and unexpected problem, he is confident he will be fit. Though he was named in the team yesterday, the side will travel with a spare back, probably Graeme Morrison, of Glasgow, or Ben MacDougall, of the Borders, just in case.
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You might be forgiven for assuming that naming 21 of the squad that achieved Scotland’s best win in four years with their best performance in six, meant the selection meeting was a ten-minute rubber-stamp job, but in fact, Hadden said, it took two days to go through all the possible permutations and combinations before deciding to leave well alone.
In that, he is following one of his own maxims. The players have spoken regularly in the last fortnight about how the coach gives them a broad game plan but encourages them to make up the details off the cuff and react to events unfolding in front of them. It seems that he has done just that himself, abandoning his original intention to change three or four players, and instead rewarding exceptional performances on Sunday.
The key position in that regard is scrum half, where Mike Blair was a consistent threat against the French, doing more than enough with half a dozen breaks to keep his place. Hadden admitted yesterday that he had looked carefully at the benefits of moving Chris Cusiter into the starting position to exploit his more detailed knowledge — earned on the Lions tour last summer — of Dwayne Peel, the Wales scrum half and, on last weekend’s showing, the main threat behind the scrum.
”Selection is complex,” Hadden said. “You have an idea in your head, a long-term picture, one for the medium term and another for the short. But that changes depending on what is in front of you. You do not just stick blindly to a plan for the sake of it, you adapt to what is in front of you.
“Playing Cusiter was certainly something we discussed. There were a lot of points for discussion, but it is the same all the time — Nos 2, 9 and 10 took up more discussion than anybody else.
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“It is great that we can talk so positively about these players and have genuine options, that augurs well for us. We went through everything with a fine-tooth comb, there was a lot of discussion about the options and the balance of the side, the strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, continuity is important but change is important too, it is all part of the mix.
“Mike (Blair) was outstanding, and that was a factor, but at the same time when he went off with a blood injury, we were not inclined to rush him back on because we had somebody with the class of Chris (Cusiter) to bring on. All the other countries have these kinds of problems, it is nice for us to have them for a change.”
Hadden said it has been easy to keep the players focused on the game ahead and that the elation in the camp at last weekend’s achievement has been tempered with an acknowledgement that there were a lot of mistakes in the game from both sides and that Scotland still have a lot of areas to improve on, in particular the scrum and lineout.
He knows that taking on Wales on their own patch will be an incredibly tough assignment for his players, six of whom will be getting their first experience of the Millennium Stadium — as is Hadden himself — while another three, Blair, Dan Parks at fly half, and Gavin Kerr at prop, are all getting their first starts.
HOW THEY LINE UP IN CARDIFF
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WALES: G Thomas (Toulouse); M Jones (Llanelli Scarlets), H Luscombe (Newport Gwent Dragons), M Watkins (Llanelli Scarlets), S Williams (Ospreys); S Jones (Clermont-Auvergne), D Peel (Llanelli Scarlets); D Jones (Ospreys), R Thomas (Cardiff Blues), A Jones (Ospreys), I Gough (Newport Gwent Dragons), R Sidoli (Cardiff Blues), C Charvis (Newcastle Falcons), M Williams (Cardiff Blues), M Owen (Newport Gwent Dragons). Replacements: M Davies (Gloucester), G Jenkins (Cardiff Blues), G Delve (Bath), A Mathias Jones (Llanelli Scarlets), M Phillips (Cardiff Blues), N Robinson (Cardiff Blues), L Byrne (Llanelli Scarlets).
SCOTLAND: H Southwell (Edinburgh); C Paterson (Edinburgh), M Di Rollo (Edinburgh), A Henderson (Glasgow), S Lamont (Northampton); D Parks (Glasgow), M Blair (Edinburgh); G Kerr (Leeds Tykes), S Lawson (Glasgow), B Douglas (Borders), A Kellock (Edinburgh), S Murray (Edinburgh), J White (Sale Sharks; captain), A Hogg (Edinburgh), S Taylor (Edinburgh). Replacements: R Ford (Borders), C Smith (Edinburgh), S MacLeod (Borders), J Petrie (Glasgow), C Cusiter (Borders), G Ross (Leeds Tykes), S Webster (Edinburgh).
Referee: S Walsh (New Zealand).