Whatever the national coach may grudge among the wares with which his counterparts in the competition will greet him, he can, at least, buy into a group of players that this year have done plenty to sell themselves. In Sean and Rory Lamont, Nikki Walker, Simon Danielli and Chris Paterson, Scotland boast a coven of wings with the potential to ruffle even the coarsest of defensive feathers.
Hadden can only be pleased at the sight of so many wide boys, for a successful start in this job could depend on one of them proving himself truly different class. Poll opinion on which is most likely to put his hand up, and Sean Lamont will win hands down. The 25-year-old is as convincing a spokesman as they come for a team still striving to set out its ideals and personality. He embodies what Hadden hopes his side will collectively become; a player who knows the scoring skills that win games, and the shoring skills that stop you losing them.
“Everyone knows that Frank has been encouraging us to have faith in our ability in an attacking sense, but that only works if nobody hides when we’re on the back foot,” he points out. “A lot has been made about the wide, attacking game we’re trying to play, but scoring tries wasn’t actually our problem last year. We managed more tries against England than anyone else but it was a try-feast down the other end too. Our real concern is keeping a tighter ship.���
The argument holds considerable water with Lamont, who has not always possessed a shield as effective as his rapier. Hadden said last week that this season’s competition will be the making of him: two years ago he was lucky just to make the competition. Another that Matt Williams wrenched from the domestic game seemingly prematurely, he performed creditably in his first three tests, a debut against Samoa warming up for two pops at Australia in the summer of 2004.
That autumn, however, there was something of a fall. Not only did he fail to join the rest of the Scottish backs in dining out on Japan, Australia had him biting on some easy bait in the bigger game. When Chris Latham, the Wallaby full-back, motored into an early break, Scotland’s drift defence fanned out to cover. Lamont, though, jumped the gun, making a decision that got his team the bullet in the overall context of the game. He wandered out to flail cringingly at Latham, who sped the ball infield for Clyde Rathbone to score. Some took that as an undermining of early promise, Lamont as the signal to sign a pledge with himself.
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“I decided there and then that my defence wasn’t good enough, that I needed to improve it massively,” he recalls. “My personal hate is missing tackles, so I’ve worked to ensure that it doesn’t happen. As a wing, if you miss your man, it’s almost certainly points against. I’ve realised that in international rugby, there’s such a fine line between things coming out brilliantly for you and things coming out disastrously. Every single guy has to take responsibility for their own actions.”
The effects of intensive consultation with Alan Tait, the defence coach reinstated by Hadden, were there to be admired last November.
Lamont held his line assiduously in the largely rearguard trudges that were the games against Argentina and Samoa. His extrovert side, nevertheless, gave welcome proof that it has not been inhibited by this evolution, roaring thrillingly to life in the second-half surge that drained the colour from countless All Black cheeks, and was interrupted only just before the line by Tana Umaga.
The temptation is to assume that the Guinness Premiership, where Lamont now turns out for Northampton Saints after two seasons at Glasgow, must have cemented his acquaintance with the more austere parts of his job. But Lamont would tell you that such a view does down both competitions it implicates.
“Some people say the Premiership is boring, just kicking for position, but that’s just the way the game as a whole has tended to develop; it’s not a specific fault of the Premiership,” he says. “The difference I found compared with the Celtic League is that there is the possibility of relegation, so no-one wants to leak tries. Of course you’re going to concentrate a lot more on defence in these circumstances. The fact that the Celtic League teams have more scope to attack means that every game up here (in Scotland) was actually just as difficult.
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“I’ve come round to the idea that if you mixed the two leagues, there would be a fair spread in terms of who was doing well and badly from each country. You’ve seen proof of that in the Heineken Cup, with Munster beating Sale and Edinburgh beating Wasps.”
The Scottish game is fortunate to have such forthright ambassadors with Lamont, Jason White, Gordon Bulloch, Tom Smith, Stuart Grimes, Gavin Kerr and even the antique Dave Hilton all earning appreciative glances from English audiences this season. Although Lamont is adamant he should be referred to as an exile, the move to Franklin’s Gardens could actually be framed as a homecoming.
When Sean was 10, his parents divorced, and he and Rory followed their mother, Jean, to her new home in Melton Mowbray. Previously, they had lived in Blairgowrie, where, outside the village rugby club of which she was secretary, Jean publicly vowed her sons would represent Scotland in each other’s company. They proved her prescient last March, starting together for the first time in a traumatic home defeat to Wales, and their relationship, forged in the fire of that early, genuine adversity, is demonstrably tight in the fluid way they feed off one another both on and away from the field. This season, they have even shared a hairstyle.
It has not, the senior party informs, always been quite so. “People have assumed there must have been a sibling rivalry between us in rugby terms, but it was more a sibling rivalry in the traditional sense,” smirks Sean. “When we were living together, we used to fight a hell of a lot, all the time really.
“Once I went to university (Sheffield Hallam), the relationship changed, and we now get on brilliantly. There’s no longer a sibling rivalry in any sense, not even rugby. I find it really nice to have him out there beside me for Scotland; it’s your brother, and you’re both out there together, doing something you like. That said, I wouldn’t say there’s any intuitive link between us, you just hope he makes that break and remembers to pass it to you when he does. More and more, we’re analysing each other’s games, and it helps having that close but utterly objective view to call on. You’re going to listen to what your brother says more than anyone else, to be honest.”
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Sean is the Hadden era’s poster boy, and he is anxious not to be misconstrued. “There’s no point coming out with stuff if you don’t actually believe it,” he says. So, then, that straight face is genuine when he says that Scotland could win the Six Nations? “It can be done. Wales showed last year that the sort of leap we’re talking about is not impossible in a single year. In terms of what I’d call progress, two wins would be the minimum there. That’s not unrealistic – we’re willing to have a go now and basically play some rugby, whereas before (under Williams) it was a bit retarded. It’s free-flowing now, but we’re having to work to get it like that. A bunch of schoolboys can run around chucking the ball between them and that’s free, that’s wide. At this level, it takes a lot of planning and time to get it right.”
Never discount a little bit of invention from left of field, though, when Sean Lamont is riding that particular wing.