The Herald reports


As Dan Parks makes his first ever start in a World Cup warm-up match, Scotland can be expected to demonstrate both how they want to play and how they will play at the forthcoming tournament.

While Andy Robinson, their head coach, has placed equal importance on both EMC Tests being played at Murrayfield this month, he accepted that it was reasonable to see today’s meeting with Italy as the dress rehearsal for what is to come in New Zealand.

In World Cup Pool B, the Scots will meet the rugged Georgians and Romanians in their opening two matches, before they play Argentina and England.

While no team would ever under-play the importance of set-piece forward play, at their different levels those pool opponents are all recognised as being particularly forward-oriented and the same applies to the Italians, who have given Scotland persistent problems in the past decade.

“I totally understand that and what we see with the likes of Georgia and Argentina is their ability to move the game away from just their set-piece,” Robinson acknowledged yesterday. “That’s what we’re seeing with Italy. You can look at the similarities and in any game it’s how you deal with the forward pack and how you establish the go-forward. You need to win quality set-piece ball.”

Yet the nature of the available man-power, allied to a traditional philosophy which sits well with those of the current Scottish coaches, means they want to play a faster moving, offloading game and believe that offers their best chance of success at this tournament. However, a combination of poor individual skills under pressure and a lack of finishing nous have let Scotland down as they have sought to develop that, not only since Robinson took over, but dating back over the past decade. Consequently, far from over-running opponents with stylish rugby, their best results in that period have, for the most part, been down to doggedness in defence and a reliance on the tactical know-how of Parks, as well as his and Chris Paterson’s goalkicking ability.

Yet coach after coach has sought to move away from that in open play by looking for alternatives to Parks in players who are more willing to play on the gain-line, rather than dropping back and dictating play from deep.The last World Cup was a classic case in point, since Frank Hadden chose Paterson as his stand-off for both warm-up matches, yet by the time they returned from France it was Parks who had been voted Scotland’s player of the tournament.

The former Glasgow Warriors stand-off’s belief in his own methods has been both a strength and a weakness in that regard. It has meant he has not allowed the repeated knock-backs to stop him from producing, but it has also meant that he has not always seemed willing to adapt. Even this week when asked if, with Ruaridh Jackson having started the previous few matches, he felt under any renewed pressure to impress his coaches, he responded by focusing purely on how hard he had worked to be at optimum fitness.

If he is a bit fed up of being asked that sort of question it is understandable, because for far too long people have failed to recognise where he has made improvements. The accompanying Opta Sports statistics may surprise some in the defensive comparison between the two stand-offs. Opta also tell us that Jackson made only two clean breaks and gave just one scoring pass in last season’s Magners League, which hardly suggests that he is suddenly about to ignite an explosive new Scotland style of play.

Yet what the statistics do not show is the impact of the playmaker on the rest of the team and that is why it will be particularly interesting to see just how creative Scotland can be today.

Just as against Ireland, they have a mix of powerful and elusive runners in the back line, but this time they have the man given the role of being Scotland’s Shane Williams. Max Evans admitted yesterday that he had been rather put out when told by Robinson that he saw him more as a winger than a centre, the position he has occupied for most of his professional career. However, he has quickly come to appreciate just how much freedom it offers him and that is contributing hugely to providing the sort of options that should take the onus off any one man to dictate how Scotland play.

When asked how much he expected to see the ball, Evans, who, like Parks, grew up in a part of the world where it was not seen as unusual or conceited to have a good opinion of his ability, took full responsibility. “It’s all down to me,” he said. “That’s something I learned in the Six Nations. I realised that if I sit back and almost don’t want the ball then I definitely won’t get it. If I step up in all the positions where I’m likely to get the ball, sometimes it might not come, but at least, if I’m in an attacking position, I will get it some of the time. In the Six Nations, I was getting the ball a lot, especially early on, which got my confidence going, so my plan is to get a lot of ball.”

It goes without saying that in order for him to do that the pack, and the front five in particular, will have to at least achieve parity with the burly Italians. By close of play tonight, however, we may have a very clear idea of how Scotland will perform over the next month or so.

This article was posted on 20-Aug-2011, 06:40 by Hugh Barrow.