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
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.
When I was much younger I remember being excited by watching the Scotland team play with its ‘exotic’ stars. I knew very little about the politics or any assumed insult to purists. All I knew was that the ‘Kilted Kiwis’ had a cool nickname and they all seemed to be that little bit sui generis.
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.
FF on Pro14 Team News and more arrivals at Glasgow: “God forbid anything happens to Finn in Racing’s match. Looks like Ntamack and Vakatawa will be back for France by…” Mar 5, 23:47
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