Category: Scotland Rugby

• ‘Mighty Mouse’ led his country 19 times, winning 43 caps

• Part of successful Lions tours in 1971 and 1974

The former Scotland and British & Irish Lions prop Ian McLauchlan has died at the age of 83. The Ayrshire-born McLauchlan, who was known throughout the rugby world as Mighty Mouse, won 43 caps for Scotland between 1969 and 1979, captaining the side 19 times.

McLauchlan’s legacy was cemented on the victorious Lions tours of New Zealand and South Africa in 1971 and 1974, being one of only five players to feature in all eight Test matches.

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Flying winger brushes off allegiance jibes and cannot wait for Australia after a testing Lions tour in 2021

Duhan van der Merwe does not want to shake hands. It is not that the hulking Scotland winger is being rude – he is polite to a fault – but after a gruelling gym session the British & Irish Lion has blisters as big as golf balls. A fist bump – a touch daunting given the size of his biceps – must suffice.

Van der Merwe’s war wounds are the first indication that public perception about him can be misleading and there are many to follow in the ensuing half-hour. From an impassioned response to accusations he is a “SpringJock”, to discussing why he runs roughshod over England once a year, Van der Merwe is illuminating company.

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• 78-year-old says he has recently undergone radiotherapy
• McGeechan led four British & Irish Lions tours

Sir Ian McGeechan, the former head coach of Scotland and the British & Irish Lions, has urged rugby players and all younger men to get themselves tested after being diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The 78-year-old, who is the consultant director of rugby at the Championship club Doncaster, led Scotland to the grand slam in the 1990 Five Nations. McGeechan oversaw four series as the Lions head coach, defeating Australia in 1989 and South Africa in 1997. He also led the team on tours of New Zealand in 1993 and South Africa again in 2009.

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A tournament that has produced tries galore reaches its glorious climax on Super Saturday with England and Ireland hot on the heels of favourites France

The best Six Nations campaigns tick two crucial boxes. The first is a consistent sense of jeopardy from start to finish and the second is a level of entertainment that elevates the tournament into the mainstream consciousness. When both occur simultaneously, as they have done this year, the championship’s final round ranks among the most gripping days in modern team sport.

This particular “Super Saturday” certainly has all the necessary spicy ingredients, starting with the prospect of France’s second title since 2010 if they can beat Scotland in Paris. A bonus-point win for England over Wales in Cardiff, though, could yet be enough to sneak the trophy in the event of a breathless Scotland win. Which, from a Scottish perspective, looms as the ultimate catch-22 scenario.

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• Head coach addresses incident with Antoine Dupont
• Scotland make two changes for trip to Paris

Ireland’s interim head coach, Simon Easterby, has expressed disappointment with comments made by his France counterpart, Fabien Galthié, over Antoine Dupont’s injury. Les Bleus won 42-27 in Dublin on Saturday to end Ireland’s grand slam hopes and move into pole position for the Six Nations title. But the post-match discussion was dominated by the season-ending knee injury suffered by the France captain.

The 28-year-old scrum-half ruptured an anterior cruciate ligament when the Ireland forwards Tadhg Beirne and Andrew Beirne cleared out a ruck. Galthié said the actions of Beirne and Porter were “reprehensible” and reported the pair to the match’s citing commissioner, but no retrospective action has been taken.

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A victory at Murrayfield still left questions about Scotland’s performance

8 mins. It’s the turn of Wales to have some phases, mostly around halfway with the ball finding its way through the hands of most of the team. It doesn’t make much ground and eventually Schoeman clamps on in the ruck to win a penalty.

Joe Roberts has replaced Tom Rogers who is injured early.

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• Captain calls on his team to ‘create our own history’
• Assistant coach Tom Harrison: ‘there’s a nastiness to us’

England have vowed to show their nasty side against Scotland on Saturday with the captain, Maro Itoje, calling on his team to buck the trend of recent history by clinching the Calcutta Cup for the first time in five years.

Buoyed by their one-point victory over France last time out, England have been champing at the bit all week with Tom Curry saying there was an edginess to training on Monday and Ben Earl revealing the squad were subjecting to a series of video clips showcasing their failings in recent defeats by Scotland.

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Gregor Townsend seems to know just what is needed to unravel their Six Nations rivals with a peerless record

Among the many questions hanging over the 132nd Calcutta Cup, the hardest to answer might just be exactly how many times you need to beat the English before they stop thinking of themselves as favourites for the next game. Since Gregor Townsend took over as head coach, Scotland have been unbeaten in six out of seven matches, including, count them, the last one, two, three, four in a row. And yet the English have contrived a way to arrive at this fixture, which could yet be a record-breaking fifth defeat, as odds-on favourites with every bookmaker, and on a wash of pundits’ promises about how their forwards are going to “monster the auld enemy”.

Well, Townsend knows exactly what those laurels are worth, and is happy enough to let England have them.

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• Co-captain recovers from injury for Six Nations clash
• ‘Every brain injury is different,’ says Gregor Townsend

Scotland will have the one player they could not afford to lose for their Calcutta Cup match against England, after their medical team confirmed that Finn Russell has recovered from his concussion in good time to play for them tomorrow.

Russell suffered the injury in the first half of their game against Ireland in the previous round, when he collided with Darcy Graham, but he was found to be symptom-free 24 hours later, and has since completed a 12-day return-to-play protocol before recommencing full contact training while the team were away in camp in Spain this week.

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In rating the teams it is the defending champions that look a cut above as the other sides struggle to find consistency

There was a suspicion of vulnerability to Ireland coming into the Six Nations but they have answered those questions in style so far. Perhaps we’d just become a bit complacent about their standards but, as the only side unbeaten after two rounds, they look formidable.

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Fly-half starred in England’s victory against France and is now set to face Scotland, the country of his father’s birth

As Gregor Townsend sweats on the availability of Finn Russell for next Saturday’s Calcutta Cup there may be a few wistful glances in the direction of England’s fly-halves. For Fin Smith, man of the match on his first Test start against France, has Scottish blood in his veins.

His grandfather, Tom Elliot, was from Galashiels – like Townsend – and represented Scotland and the British & Irish Lions as a loosehead prop. Smith’s father, Andrew, is from Dunfermline and met his wife, Judith, Tom’s daughter, at the London Scottish clubhouse. Smith Sr has eight England caps of his own but as a child would marvel at his grandfather’s collection, he and brother Angus regularly trying them on.

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• Six Nations updates, 2.15pm GMT kick-off at Murrayfield
• France 43-0 Wales | Sign up for The Breakdown | Mail Lee

Pre match reading

It’s 25 years since the Six Nations was created, thus rendering Scotland Five Nations champions in perpetuity. Relive the 2000 tournament here with this brilliant collection of images and memories.

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Twenty-five years on from the first Six Nations, Murrayfield hosts battle between two teams who have come a long way in a quarter of a century

And so we head back to where it all began. The Six Nations is a quarter of a century old. Wednesday will mark 25 years since its opening fixture on 5 February 2000, but of more visceral significance will be Saturday afternoon’s encounter at Murrayfield between Scotland and Italy, a rerun of that first match, bathed in sunshine, when Italy, the new arrivals, announced themselves to the old championship with a shattering 34-20 win over the champions.

Those not yet in middle age may balk at the phrase “champions Scotland”. But it is true. They were quite often champions back then. In 1999 they won the last Five Nations, outplaying the rest in what must still rank as the greatest championship of them all. England squeaked past them at Twickenham in round two, but Scotland had run rings round them all match, just as they would all-comers that year. When England fell to the most dramatic defeat of them all on the final Sunday, against Wales at Wembley, Scotland were crowned worthy champions, having thrashed France in Paris, no less, the day before.

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The former national rugby union captain has been spared jail for the domestic abuse of his estranged wife, Gill, after courts painted a grim picture of his off-pitch behaviour

Scotland has not always been blessed with rugby players of genuine world class but prime-time Stuart Hogg was a rare exception. At the height of his powers he was the Six Nations Player of the Year in successive seasons in 2016 and 2017, mixing acceleration and attacking intent with a just-try-and-stop-me attitude that set him apart from the average workaday pro.

The talented lad from Hawick was a big fish in a series of smallish pools – the Borders, Scottish rugby, Exeter – and grew accustomed to being hailed as king of his local oval-ball castle. While, behind closed doors, not being entirely the man his many fans thought him to be.

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• Hogg given community payback order with supervision
• Sentence for 32-year-old is an ‘alternative to custody’

The former Scotland rugby union captain Stuart Hogg will be supervised for a year as an alternative to jail after he admitted abusing his estranged wife over the course of five years.

He pleaded guilty to a single charge of domestic abuse of his ex-partner, Gillian Hogg, when he appeared at Selkirk Sheriff Court on 4 November. He admitted shouting and swearing, tracking her movements and sending her messages which were alarming and distressing in nature.

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