The Herald writes

Puzzle for Robinson as he struggles to make all his 10s add up

We don't know for sure where Andy Robinson was on the afternoon of Saturday, February 3, 2007, but let's conjure a scene anyway.

Let's place him in the front room of his Bath home, half of cider in one hand (he doesn't drink beer) and cheese and tomato sandwich (he's a strict vegetarian) in the other. And let's turn the television on.

Now let's cover our ears. Robinson can be famously vocal when he watches rugby, so the pictures he would have seen from Twickenham that day must have sent his tonsils into overdrive. In England's opening match of the Six Nations championship, Jonny Wilkinson was delivering a fly-half masterclass, torturing Scotland with his brilliance. He scored a clever – if, admittedly, rather dodgy – try, kicked five penalties and two conversions, and generally ran England's show to perfection.

Which is precisely what he didn't do while Robinson was England coach. Due to a succession of injuries, Robinson had never had the benefit of Wilkinson's sublime skills in the two years he was in that job – a term that had ended just a couple of months before the player made his sensational return at Twickenham. "Bloody typical!" Robinson must have been bellowing as he watched Wilkinson's performance unfold. "Just my bloody luck that you turn up and do it now!"

How would Robinson's unhappy time at England's helm have unfolded had he been able to build his team around the man who kicked that famous World Cup-winning dropped goal in 2003? We will never know, but while players like Charlie Hodgson, Olly Barkley and Andy Goode wore Wilkinson's shirt – without ever threatening to fill his boots – they succeeded only in reinforcing one of rugby's oldest principles of all: you'll never build a consistently successful side without first nailing down the fly-half berth.

That point had been made well enough in these parts over the preceding quarter-century. Between John Rutherford's international debut in 1979 and Gregor Townsend's last Test in 2003, they and Craig Chalmers pretty much made up the fly-half roster for Scotland. Townsend played at centre on a couple of dozen occasions, but for 184 international matches – the combined total of Tests played by the three Borderers – there wasn't much debate about who the top dog was.

How much would Robinson give for such an easy decision now? With a World Cup receding in the rear-view mirror and a Six Nations looming, it seems remarkable that there should still be so many questions around what is generally recognised to be the most critical selection decision. Robinson got it horribly wrong a couple of years ago when he chose the conspicuously out-of-form Phil Godman of Edinburgh at a time when Dan Parks, then of Glasgow, could scarcely put a foot wrong, but it would be pushing it so say that the choice today has become any easier.

The other day, Paul Ackford, once an England team-mate of Robinson's and now a respected chronicler of the game, suggested that selection is the only thing a coach has to be good at. "The rest," said Ackford, "is largely self-serving hokum." A little simplistic perhaps, but the words will have resonance for Robinson. The man now in charge of Scotland has never quite established his innocence of the charge, first levelled when he was looking after England's affairs, of being a great coach but a lousy selector.

Would that one of Scotland's candidates for the No.10 shirt have spoken up in his defence in last weekend's round of Heineken Cup action. As it was, the relevant games offered more questions than answers, Indeed, far from providing an easily identifiable front-runner, there was a distinct impression that the pack of playmakers had bunched up in their race to fill the fly-half berth in the Scotland team that plays England in just over seven weeks' time.

Ruaridh Jackson finished the World Cup as Robinson's favoured player, but a hamstring injury followed by a rather unconvincing return in Glasgow's draw with Newport Gwent Dragons the weekend before last appeared to have knocked him back a bit. By contrast, Duncan Weir had been in outstanding form for the Warriors, and the 20-year-old was deservedly picked ahead of Jackson for last Sunday's Heineken Cup tie with Montpellier.

By the end of that match, though, Jackson appeared to have recovered some lost ground. After replacing the uncharacteristically edgy Weir just short of the hour mark, Jackson looked far fresher than he had done in Wales seven days earlier, especially in his contribution to the Federico Aramburu try that effectively won Glasgow the game.

But what of matters at the other end of the M8? Only a few weeks ago, young Harry Leonard appeared to be holding his hand up for consideration. Having started the season playing centre for Boroughmuir, the 19-year-old was handed the Edinburgh No.10 shirt and wore it with distinction in a few games. Sadly, when the pressure came on, he faltered, and was replaced at half-time in his club's recent Heineken Cup matches against Racing Metro and, last Friday, Cardiff Blues.

Meanwhile, Parks made an impressive contribution to the Blues' 25-8 victory in that match, his haul of a conversion, two dropped goals and four penalties offering a reminder that few players can manage a scoreboard quite so well as he can. When it comes to managing a backline, however, he still slips back into the habits of old, and the watching Robinson is unlikely to have been impressed by his failure to get more from such stellar team-mates as Jamie Roberts, Casey Laulala and Alex Cuthbert.

You could argue, in fact, that Scotland's best playmaker this season has not been a fly-half at all, for Edinburgh's Greig Laidlaw has looked superb on those occasions he has moved to the 10 berth from his starting position at scrum-half. Nor should you rule out the possibility that Stuart Hogg, brilliant on the break against Montpellier, will eventually find himself back in the pivot position he played as a schoolboy, especially in light of Glasgow coach Sean Lineen's remark that full-back, where Hogg has been used this season, is not where his long-term future lies. Food for thought for Robinson.

This article was posted on 14-Dec-2011, 07:58 by Hugh Barrow.