- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Opinion
The Calcutta Cup headlines the opening weekend of the 2022 Six Nations. Thus, it is time to dust off our familiar tropes about the Scots.
Stuart Hogg captains a well-settled side for a Lowlands coach who has finally accepted the wee madness of a brick-mason-turned-flyhalf, the Mighty Finn Russell, and they bring seven Lions to the fight, whilst England is struggling to field a team. Russell may take special pleasure in schooling the young “it boy” Marcus Smith.
But hope is never boasted of north of Hadrian’s Wall. Since 2000 ushered in the Six Nations, Scotland has never won four matches in one year, and never won the Cup.
You’ll read no chest thumping in the Edinburgh and Glasgow papers. A people who invented haggis doesn’t do much “braggis.”
“Dour” is only used to describe this frustratingly fair and enigmatic people. Frankie Boyle jested “Glasgow is a very negative place. If Kanye was born in Glasgow, he would have been called No You Cannae.”
The Scottish use caveats in their disclaimers and have a city— Glasgow — once named the friendliest in Europe as well as the continent’s murder capital, in the same week.
Praise a Scot openly, without irony or a glass in hand, and watch a man crawl away red-faced. They prefer gruff one-syllable small talk about weather and drink and somebody else, or a deal.
Yes, the lines between frugal, tight, and stingy have all been leapfrogged by the calculating Scots. It is the only place I’ve been “down-sold” at a golf course. “But you could get these balls covered in barnacles for half as much,” I was told by the quizzical man on the Isle of Skye when I tried to buy a new sleeve.
There is a branch in my family tree from Scotland, sectarian Argyle Campbells who went to Ulster as teetotaling presbyters and then, left for the sunnier colonies because Londonderry land was too dear.
There’s a joke about that, too: “I’ve seen an article online asking if Scottish people are as tight as people say we are,” says the Scot, “but unfortunately it was behind a paywall. I’ll never know.”
Judging from that side of the family now, six or seven generations later, we can see a few facets of traditional character: schadenfreude, suspicion of snobs, modesty, a love of simplicity yet a tendency to extremes, and an obsession with argument.
Being frustrating and contentious is a skill well honed in Scotland.
Chic Murray joked: “I went to the butchers to buy a leg of lamb. ‘Is it Scotch?’, I asked. ‘Why?’ the butcher said in reply. ‘Are you going to talk to it or eat it?’ ‘In that case,’ I asked, ‘Have you got any wild duck?” ‘No’, he responded, ‘but I’ve got one I could aggravate for you.’”
Yes, Scots are a bit repressed emotionally, but then again, they invented the most aggressively belligerent musical instrument in history, even more intrusive than the vuvuzela, the unbelievably loud and spooky bagpipes.
They can be loud. This weekend’s tilt is eagerly anticipated, even if Gregor Townsend and Hogg will downplay their chances. We will hear it just after the light show, when the “anthem” is sung.
And if Flower of Scotland is an odd anthem. First, the Scots already have an anthem: “God Save the Queen,” by virtue of the agreement uniting the kingdoms.
Second, although it speaks of old days gone by when Robert the Bruce won the Battle of Bannockburn over Edward II of England, it is a recent song. In 2006, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted a poll of five songs (including Scotland the Brave) and Flower of Scotland won 41 per cent. It tends to be played too slowly, and even still the crowd is a few beats behind.
Bannockburn has been subsumed by the town of Stirling, just northwest of Edinburgh. A burn flows into the River Forth, which empties into the Firth. The site of the battle is now an unremarkable housing estate.
The song admits: “Those days are past now, and in the past they must remain, but we can still rise now, and be the nation again, that stood against him, Proud Edward’s Army, and sent him homeward, to think again.”
Edward (Jones) has been thinking, after losing in London last year, and he is back to storm cold Murrayfield with an army in white.
In 2018, I went to that imposing stadium to see the Springboks play Scotland. There is not much to eat and nothing to drink inside the place.
All around are little booths of beer in the mud, and then you scale the battlements to an elevated pitch. Pyrotechnics rev up the crowd.
The match went the way they have normally gone: opportunistic skill keep the Scots in the game with a miracle try, the Boks get a card, but grind down the hosts with mounds of muscle and an extra burst of speed.
That may be Eddie’s plan, again, despite all the sound and fury about young Smith at playmaker. With Owen Farrell out, and an untried combination likely in midfield, the game plan may look closer to 2020 than 2021.
I would feel more confident about a power plan if recently healthy Joe Launchbury or Japan-based George Kruis were in the English pack along with overlooked Sam Underhill. Replacement captain Courtney Lawes, who manages to combine ferocity with calm, is out, and lumpish Jonny Hill, too.
Scotland may have a Lion-laden backline, but did they have a pack to match England at full strength? Maybe not. However, Charlie Ewels is not a bully at Test level and he may be partnering lean Maro Itoje in the second row. Nick Isiekwe is a poor man’s Lawes. Maybe Lewis Ludlam of the Saints is a rougher candidate.
The English scrum has not been solid lately. Eddie Jones admits half of the penalties his side gives up are at set piece. England’s scrum win percentage has gone from 96 percent in 2019 to 97 percent in 2020 and 85 percent last year. Change in the front row is no friend of a scrum.
A scrum law amendment designed to curb axial loading, the practice of a hooker using the crown of his head to “brake” the force of his pack in between “bind” and “set,” and then shearing across into the opposing hooker and tight-head, forcing dangerous levels of power into that vulnerable joint, will test the skillset of hookers: they must use the right footwork to keep a foot brake until the “set.” Keeping that foot forward is not easy or familiar. Jamie George seems like he would prefer the axial load to the ballet plie.
To add to the drama, Murrayfield is forecast to be wet and windy this weekend. Built high to be dry, it is a tricky place for kickers. The locals will likely enjoy the weather being filthy.
But the box office is Finn versus Marcus. The Kid against the Gunslinger. The least predictable proven flyhalf faces the unproven boy who is predicted to be the best.
One wonders how Eddie will handle Marcus if there is a bad match. Finn and Gregor seem to be friends now, after the coach made his point a few years ago. It is an age old Scottish tale: of strange bedfellows and turnarounds.
(Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)
The first real book I ever read all the way through as a boy was “Treasure Island” by Robert Louis Stevenson. Loving that, I moved on to “Kidnapped,” his adventure set in the 18th century in the Lowlands in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745.
The narrator is a teenaged orphan, David Balfour, gone to Edinburgh to see his uncle Ebenezer, a miser living on porridge who tries to kill young David to gain his inheritance on the first night of David’s stay. When this fails, he sells David off to a rogue captain into slavery in the Carolinas. Winds push the ship back to the Hebrides. They strike a small boat, killing all except a Jacobite – Alan Breck Stewart – a skilled swordsman, who commandeers the vessel after killing five attackers, with David as his wingman, and sails back to the mainland to seek vengeance on a Campbell—Colin Roy – who has taken Breck’s birthplace over.
Shipwreck separates David and his new friend Breck and kills a few more of their erstwhile captors. David survives two attacks on his life in the Highlands, one by knife, the other by gun, only to encounter Colin Roy himself, and witness his death by an unseen sniper. As he is the only one there and identified, David is framed, and a Wanted poster is all over the land.
David meets Breck again, and together they flee through the heathered Highlands, with David constantly near death by fatigue and illness, until all is made well at the end, back in Edinburgh, with a sting of Uncle Ebenezer, and a settlement of money.
The theme was imperfect justice, and how it can include both revenge (for Breck) and inheritance (for David), but the story is pure adventure.
This first match, which in the Six Nations is almost must-win for any team seeking the title, shapes up as a Stevenson tale for someone. The rebel Russell and his Lion mate Ali Price may ignite the giant winger Duhan van der Merwe, or Hogg may come steaming through a window of lazy runners, or Chris Harris may carry his Premiership form into the test, or 2021 Six Nation Player of the Year Hamish Watson may win his duel with Tom Curry again.
The winter may be the winner.
Or it might be the moment when we see Smith and his fullback Freddie Steward usher in a de-Farrelled era.
Let’s see some Lowlands rugby and may the best men win.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.