ONE constant gripe in rugby these days is just how crowded the midfield has become. However, it is equally packed when it comes to those trying to enter the fray, according to Edinburgh centre Matt Scott.
When he made his international debut in 2012, he could count on one hand how many rivals he had chasing one of the centre berths with Scotland. Today, he may have to whip his socks off to keep count.
With the World Cup coming around again next year, the 28-year-old believes he has given himself the best possible chance of catching Scotland coach Gregor Townsend’s eye when playing every other week at Murrayfield. He recognises, however, he is just one in a long queue for a 12 or 13 jersey.
However, his first-half try on Friday against Benetton will not have gone unnoticed. The midfielder’s touch-down helped secure Edinburgh a nail-biting 31-30 bonus-point Pro 14 victory.
Recalling his first Scotland call, Scott said: “There was me, Nick De Luca, Joe Ansbro, Graeme Morrison was just about retired, but apart from that, I’d only been a professional, playing for about six months, and still in the academy at Edinburgh when I got my first cap. Which only shows you there was no-one really.
“The thing at centre, at the moment, is there are a lot of different skill-sets, body shapes and traits. It must be difficult for a coach to decide what kind of game he wants to play. That’s good, in the sense that you have that variety when everyone is fit, when you’ve got power, more ball players, line breakers, guys with good feet, guys with good speed. There are different combinations depending on what you want to do, but that means the competition is really tough.”
Scott admitted Townsend had an influence on his move back to Edinburgh.
“I spoke to him [Townsend] when I was speaking to Edinburgh and before I signed and he didn’t say you have to come back to have a chance of playing in the Scotland team. At Gloucester, I had been in squads. He just wanted me playing regularly and from a national coach point of view, he’d prefer you to be up here, in terms of the control they can have.
“But in terms of getting back in the team, he’s happy with the way I’m playing, happy with how my defence is going this season, he just wants me to get my hands on the ball more often, get more touches, more carries.”
After just two seasons down in Gloucester, who he joined in 2016, the move back home was a no-brainer for Scott given what he still wants to achieve in the game.
“At the start of my second season with Gloucester, if someone had said I’d have been back at Edinburgh by the end of the season I probably wouldn’t have believed them. This was before Cockers [Richard Cockerill] had taken over, but you could see the kind of impact he’d had, and keeping in contact with some of the players I’d played with, they were all very complimentary about the change and how different it was.
“It just transpired that things didn’t work out for me last year at Gloucester, and to be at a club, where I am playing with some of my really good friends, with chances to potentially win silverware at my hometown club, and to have the ambition to still play for Scotland with a World Cup so close around the corner, I think it’s a great place for me to give myself the best possible chance to do that,” admitted Scott, who was part of the Scotland 2015 World Cup squad.
Having sampled the English game, the 39-times capped Scott doesn’t see too much difference in the standard between Pro14 and the Premiership. What is noticeable for him though, are attitudes towards anything outside England.
“You have this threat of relegation in the English Premiership, which is massive. You get a lot of desperate clubs from quite early on in the season and you can see who are going to be struggling. It makes for tough games. For a team like Gloucester, it’s a great club to play for and you have a lot of local derbies, and it is a hot bed of rugby, in the West Country. It’s a great experience, and I loved it both on and off the pitch.
“The guys in the English Premiership often look down on the Pro14, for whatever reason. Coming back, I don’t see a massive gulf in quality at all.
“When I moved down, a lot of the Gloucester boys hadn’t heard of half the boys in the Scotland team. I think it was around the time Glasgow beat Leicester 40-odd points to nil at Welford Road, and they were baffled by that. I was like, ‘well he’s a British Lion, he’s got 50 caps for Scotland,’ and they just didn’t have a clue.
“The Premiership is a great league and people are very much focused on the players and teams in that league. But for some reason they don’t appear to know as much about the Pro14 or Scottish rugby.”
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