Scotland will be skippered by Sione Tuipulotu and Jamie Ritchie in the third match on the Skyscanner Americas tour match against Chile on Saturday as head coach Gregor Townsend blends from the squads who have featured in the opening matches.
The fresh pairing of co-captains are two of five players retained from the starting line-up that defeated USA 42-7 last weekend in Washington DC, with Kyles Rowe and Steyn and lock Alex Craig also selected for back-to-back Test matches.
The back row also contains blindside Gregor Brown, who debuted in the tour opener against Canada, and try-scorer against Canada Josh Bayliss. In the second row there will be a refreshingly new pairing of Craig alongside Ewan Johnson, who makes his first Scotland start.
Continuing the developmental theme, Nathan McBeth (loosehead) and Will Hurd (tighthead) also earn their first international starts and will pack down with hooker Dylan Richardson in the front row to make a front five without any of the usual suspects for the first time in a long time.
Co-captain Tuipulotu forms a centre partnership with vice-captain Kyle Steyn, who switches from the wing for the penultimate match of the tour. On the wing, the experiment with Jamie Dobie as winger slash scrum-half cover continues. It’s a great option when you are on tour but would Dobie – a brilliant 9 – be considered for selection as a winger if Scotland’s full depth were available in the heat of a Six Nations?
Gus Warr, a double try-scorer on debut against Canada, has instead been named at scrum-half so you can see why Toony wanted another look; he partners the underused Ben Healy.
Glen Young, Ross Thompson, Elliot Millar Mills and Ross McCann returned home from tour this week while Ben Afshar, Rob Carmichael and Fin Richardson joined to cover the out-of-window match against Uruguay.
With Robbie Smith the final name leaving the tour, Patrick Harrison is primed for a Scotland debut, the hooker listed as one of five forward replacements alongside Pierre Schoeman and Javan Sebastian, second row Max Williamson and Scotland captain Rory Darge.
Adam Hastings, Stafford McDowall and Matt Currie provide a Centre-centric bench option as the tour winds further down the South American continent towards the season’s end.
Scotland: Kyle Rowe, Jamie Dobie, Kyle Steyn, Sione Tuipulotu, Arron Reed, Ben Healy, Gus Warr; Nathan McBeth, Dylan Richardson, Will Hurd, Alex Craig, Ewan Johnson, Gregor Brown, Jamie Ritchie, Josh Bayliss.
Replacements: Patrick Harrison, Pierre Schoeman, Javan Sebastian, Max Williamson, Rory Darge, Adam Hastings, Stafford McDowall, Matt Currie.
10 responses
well it is difficult to pull out too many conclusions from this tour so far, given the developmental side and fairly limited opposition. stand out for me from the newbies, probably Paterson, Dylan R (although lineout was shaky in 1st half of chile) and Bayliss. a few decent performances elsewhere from dobie, reed, currie and harrison when he came on. but in terms of next squad for autumn, cant see too many adding themselves into the main team. gus warr has been fine but realistically is behind White/Horne/Dobie/price/velacott at 9. reed look very quick but not really tested. am not yet convinced by Healy at 10. great boot but not seeing too much else. hope adam H stays fit for a while now.
Where has everyone gone on this blog? For years it’s been a go-to site for me to read predominantly informed comments by and debates involving Scotland rugby supporters. Far, far superior to some of the Scottish Rugby Facebook sites that are too often spoiled by comments from sweary bams.
What’s gone wrong? Genuine question.
Enthusiasm has fairly waned due to the lack of change in the head coach position & persistent exclusion of guys who should clearly be called up.
Groundhog year once again.
I’m worried about Neil…
I asked the same thing recently on another thread.
I’d guess:
– the inconsistent / timeliness of articles posted here to match the actual activity of what’s going on with e.g. Scotland team; this is the latest article from a week or so ago, yet there’s been another test within the last few days and no report/article yet. That’s not a criticism, this is a free site and I welcome the work everyone who contributes puts in – but if comments/real-time traffic was a competitive focus for this site, well the Offside Line are documenting everything that happens so most commentary traffic seems to go there instead.
– Gave up on the SRB podcast a long, long time ago so can’t comment on recent quality of that – but seems that most of the pods don’t allow comments as far as I can tell, unlike back in the day? I may be wrong.
So just did quick check and looks like comments for the actual pods are on (I recall they were switched off for several maybe a couple of years back when the whole identity politics debate was rife so maybe I carried on assuming as haven’t been listening before/since then).
Either not enough people are listening or see my other comment above.
Would love to see more articles here for comments as usually they are good quality.
Yeah podcast posts should be open for comments, they’ve only ever been off on individual posts.
Apologies for the lack of posts, as someone said above it’s a time thing, I’ve been away all last week but will put up a Uruquay report once I have seen the game. We’re going to be posting something soon around looking for help with the site, but yes TOL and SRN are both commercial enterprises so their teams don’t have day jobs and can cover every little bit of news!
Totally fair Rory and appreciate the work that is done
Good to have developed depth in the back three. Kinghorn, Duhan, Steyn, Graham, Paterson, Rowe — all quality. Reed has looked good too and Dobie can play there.
Scrum-half also good what with White, Horne, Price, Dobie, Warr. But at stand-off Healy, despite looking good in touches, has been less successful. To be a cohesive team we need Russell (or if he’s unavailable Hastings) at 10.
Our situation for a few years had been a gaggle of hookers (McInally, Brown, Turner, Cherry…) but no real first choice. Turner had become cemented as our #1, but now he’s off to Japan, who’s our #1? I imagine Ashman, then Matthews, Richardson, Harrison, Smith, Fraser.
Not sure I would list Price in the list of SHs.