THE HERALD REPORTS

White impresses new Scottish management

KEVIN FERRIE, Chief Rugby Writer November 04 2008
Jason White may have salvaged his international career by impressing the new Scotland management at last week's training camp in La Manga.

The 30-year-old Sale Sharks flanker was the undisputed leader of the national squad until earlier this year when recurring injury problems that had contributed to a loss of form cost him his place.

Even after that the man first selected as Scotland skipper in 2005 was still seen as an automatic selection for any Scotland squad when fit, but Mike Brewer, the new forwards coach, made it clear yesterday that was no longer the case now that White is struggling to get a regular place with Sale.

"It's still like late August/September for Jason as far as game time is concerned. He was close to being left out of the 30 to go to Spain, but his preparation is fantastic, his game knowledge... he wants to know everything there is to learn so that he is accurate," Brewer explained, following yesterday's training session at ex-Watsonian White's old stomping ground Myreside.

In elaborating on his thinking Brewer, a former All Black captain whose first assignment with Scotland is to try to help them register a first ever win over those opponents on Saturday, admitted that there were reservations about the old dog's capacity to learn new tricks.

"We've tried to incorporate the coding system similar to what's been used in the past, but the dynamic has been changed quite a bit.

"There have been one or two that struggled with it, but we picked that they would struggle with it before we even went to Spain.

"There were others guys like Jason for example that I thought might struggle but he's been to the forefront. So I'm actually quite pleased with how they've adapted and approached it."

Asked to assess what he has seen within the Scotland squad after his first real week of working with them, Brewer said he rated Euan Murray as the best tighthead prop in the UK and that he was well supported by Allan Jacobsen and Ross Ford in the front-row as well as Nathan Hines and Jim Hamilton at lock. Behind them he described Mike Blair, Phil Godman, Ben Cairns, the Lamont brothers and Chris Paterson as among the best attackers he has ever worked with as player or coach.

With the team to be announced this morning that seemed largely in line with the XV that started and finished the session today, though Thom Evans was in the back line rather than Rory Lamont. In the pack it was White, John Barclay and Simon Taylor who were working together as a back-row behind that front five identified by Brewer.

That would be a vastly experienced Scotland side, whereas the feeling among the New Zealand media is that they will make 10 or 12 changes to the team that edged past Australia 19-14 last weekend.

Whether or not they do, Brewer - who admitted to having told Scotland's players he will be singing both anthems and that he expected to have "goose-bumps" when the Haka is performed - believes the Scots can win.

"It's a relatively young and inexperienced All Black side. They do make mistakes... a lot more mistakes than other All Black sides have done in the past. That comes from the pressure the opposition are putting on them and it's up to us to force those mistakes.

"We need to put a lot of pressure on their set-piece and their source of supply of ball. There's an opportunity there that if our platform is good up front and we're producing phased ball that's on the front foot then we'll trouble them. If we don't we'll struggle to contain them.

"We looked at the way we want to play, based on how the All Blacks defend. We looked at our platform and then the lovely thing was being able to sit down and watch the game in Hong Kong on Saturday morning which let us see, as far as our scout was concerned, what was right and what was wrong. We had a smile on our faces at the end of the game."

This article was posted on 4-Nov-2008, 20:24 by Hugh Barrow.