Scotland expects: the slogan for this year’s RBS Six Nations Championship. For the first time since rugby went professional, the Scotland team is heading into the tournament with justifiable confidence based on recent performances, a settled side, signs of the pro clubs becoming competitive and a feelgood factor that seems to be sweeping the sport.
For the players and management, the test will be if they can handle it. Scotland are so used to going into every match as overwhelming underdogs that the weight of expectation has rarely landed on their shoulders. Nobody can have a clear idea how it will fit.
They are all acutely conscious of the historic fact that whenever the side has done well in the championship, it has been on this cycle of matches with the two big rugby nations, France and England, sending their teams to Murrayfield while the Scots travel to the countries with more comparable rugby populations. When the cycle next comes round in two years’ time everybody should have settled squads, so this could be a unique opportunity.
The problem is that it could also come spectacularly off the rails. Scotland may have had the kind of build-up that is more associated with the Barbarians than a serious international squad, but if there is any country capable of producing devastating rugby on that sort of preparation, it is France, their opponents tomorrow, though even they seem to have doubts.
The French have six new caps in the squad, four of them starting. There are three players in the run-on XV with single-figure caps, and only five have played more than 20 games. Just six of the side that finished the World Cup are retained and three of them are changing position - it is truly a clean break from the Bernard Laporte era.
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For France this match is more about starting to prepare for the long-term future rather than gunning for glory this season, and the noises coming out of their training camp south of Paris have been decidedly downbeat, in marked contrast to the relaxed confidence on show at Murrayfield.
“We are going into the Six Nations in awe of no one,” Frank Hadden, the Scotland coach, said. “There is nobody out there we are afraid of. We have the two big guns at home and three tough away matches but the gap in ability in the Six Nations is very narrow. It should be very exciting and we intend to have a big impact on the outcome.
“It is looking the most open championship in years. The fact that we have a home game to start could get us on a roll and who knows where it could finish. We know that the French are a fantastic side but we have a very good side indeed and have absolutely nothing to fear.”
In all, 21 of the 22 Scotland players were involved in the World Cup campaign, the exception being Nick De Luca, whose club performances at centre forced the selectors’ hands in filling a role that has been something of a problem for whoever has been in charge since Alan Tait, now the defence coach, retired from playing.
De Luca has had to work on his defence, but helping to shut out the likes of Brian O’Driscoll, Dan Hipkiss and Yannick Jauzion in Edinburgh’s Heineken Cup campaign show that he is absorbing the lessons quickly now that he is getting a run of games behind a competitive pack. There is no doubting his attacking qualities and if the new-look France defence gives him a glimmer of space he will take it.
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The other well-trailed newcomer is John Barclay, whose consistency is described as “amazing” by Hadden as he too forced the selectors’ hands.