With rugby, as with all competitive sport, you see players have to deal with setbacks. Sometimes these setbacks can define a player’s career. Sometimes, just sometimes though, a player can define his career by using those setbacks as opportunities.
The key is setting goals and being realistic about what you can, and importantly, need to achieve.
So when Dundonian Alasdair Dickinson told me “The shoulder’s OK so far!” I couldn’t help but feel a little relief for him.
Just when I thought I had figured out the Axis of Anticipated that is Robinson and Townsend they go and mix things up! Here is the Scotland team to face the Italians at Murrayfield on Saturday, 5pm:
15 Rory Lamont (Toulon) 24 caps
14 Max Evans (Castres) 19 caps
13 Nick De Luca (Edinburgh) 25 caps
12 Graeme Morrison (Glasgow Warriors) 29 caps
11 Simon Danielli (Ulster) 27 caps
10 Dan Parks (Cardiff Blues) 61 caps
9 Mike Blair (Edinburgh) VICE-CAPTAIN 71 caps
1 Alasdair Dickinson (Sale Sharks) 20 caps
2 Scott Lawson (Gloucester) 27 caps
3 Moray Low (Glasgow Warriors) 14 caps
4 Nathan Hines (Clermont Ferrand) 72 caps
5 Alastair Kellock (Glasgow Warriors) CAPTAIN 33 caps
6 Kelly Brown (Saracens) 45 caps
8 Richie Vernon (Sale Sharks) 11 caps
7 John Barclay (Glasgow Warriors) 28 caps
Substitutes
16 Dougie Hall (Glasgow Warriors) 35 caps
17 Euan Murray (Newcastle Falcons) 38 caps
18 Richie Gray (Glasgow Warriors) 11 caps
19 Ross Rennie (Edinburgh) 7 caps
20 Chris Cusiter (Glasgow Warriors) 52 caps
21 Ruaridh Jackson (Glasgow Warriors) 7 caps
22 Nikki Walker (Ospreys) 23 caps
At the moment I am beset on all sides with the reality, the spin coming out of Murrayfield and probably some early onset moaning from supposed experts. I have purposely not read any newspapers this morning, but I have watched the game again, re-read some stuff that went out live during the game and have endeavoured to see most of the official comments. So let’s look at the coverage of Scotland 10-6 Ireland.
With the EMC tests looming and the daily press releases telling us how our players are “harder, faster, stronger” than ever before whilst the players assure us the group has never been so tight-knit, I must ask: how will the warm up games pan out?
The reason I ask this is that everything in training, we have been told, is geared towards rugby specifics.
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