Scotland: Injury & away day blues give Gregor Townsend a Georgia conundrum
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Sean Maitland garnered Scotland's first try in a win during which three players were forced off
Scotland were always going to throw the kitchen sink at France on Saturday, but given the nature of their loss in Nice the week before, the need for attrition and victory was all the more pronounced.
That desperation saw them claw their way back from the brink of another wounding loss, a recovery that will restore some misplaced belief. Going full pelt this close to a World Cup always has its risks, though. On numerous fronts, Scotland are in a waiting game now.
Given the need for as many pugnacious characters as he can lay his hands on, there were hugely disconcerting moments for head coach Gregor Townsend in the rematch against France. After 17 minutes, he lost Tommy Seymour to a failed head injury assessment. Just after the break, he lost Blade Thomson to another failed HIA.
Considering Thomson spent so long on the sidelines last season recovering from concussion, Townsend will have gulped hard when his number eight exited. Thomson looked good in his time on the pitch. Already he's marked out as Scotland's starting number eight in Japan, if he makes it.
The fingers are crossed for Seymour and Thomson, but you can add in every part of the anatomy that's vaguely crossable when it comes to Sam Skinner, who was carried off just after the hour with a hamstring injury that looked deeply worrying. The sight of the player on crutches and on the verge of tears in the aftermath did not bode well.
Skinner is one of Townsend's starting locks as well as providing cover at blindside. He's a combative sort, the type that the coach can ill-afford to lose.
With Skinner's update coming soon, you hope for the best while getting prepared for the worst. If he's ruled out, it's just another reminder of the precarious life of professional sports people. Rugby, with its ever-growing injury rate, is an especially cruel example.
Sam Skinner was helped off the pitch on Saturday
Scotland's maddening inconsistency writ large
Saturday was another journey into the dramatic for Scotland, another lousy start to add to the litany of lousy starts but with a pleasing response to adversity. Despite suffering the loss of Seymour, Thomson and Skinner, they managed to dig out the victory and kept France scoreless for the last 53 minutes.
It was only the second time in 25 Tests under Townsend that his team shut out the opposition for an entire second half. That stuff matters. This close to a World Cup, it matters enormously.
True, it's the kind of resilience and hard-to-beat mentality that they often display in front of their own people but only rarely find when they're away. It's their maddening inconsistency writ large. Passive in Nice but sufficiently thunderous in Edinburgh to get the job done despite giving France a nice head start largely through their own silly errors. A team of psychologists need to get to work on the Scotland dressing room.
Save for the opening half hour, France were what France usually are when they're asked to play away from home against a team with a point to prove. This was their 19th away Test since the end of the last World Cup and they've now lost 16 of them. As soon as Scotland started running at them, with the irrepressible Hamish Watson leading the charge, France's threat, and any possibility of them winning, slowly faded away.
Scotland would have won by more had they not butchered some line-outs in promising positions and had they not failed to make a key pass when France were a sitting duck. Never mind. They won.
Winning is all that matters now. Not entertaining, not giving the fans a rugby version of the Harlem Globetrotters that ends in defeat. This was Scotland's first victory in six Tests. They needed it like they need their next breath.
'Dishevelled' Ireland become strange proposition
In the hours after the final whistle at Murrayfield, some interesting news came drifting up from Twickenham where England had just obliterated Ireland 57-15. In less than a month, Scotland will open their World Cup campaign against Ireland in Yokohama.
Joe Schmidt's team will be favourites, but they're a troubled outfit right now. They had a poor Six Nations, an unimpressive first World Cup warm-up game against Italy and now a record defeat by England who scored more points, more tries and won by the biggest margin in any of their Tests against Ireland in history. That's a span of 135 games across 144 years.
Schmidt called his team "dishevelled" and no wonder. On top of the eight tries they conceded, Ireland coughed up six line-outs - four of them by their captain, Rory Best, who's looked wobbly for some time and who's 37 and is retiring after the World Cup. Having his captain in such poor form is not exactly a great landscape for the Kiwi.
Ireland started with 11 of the players who would have been expected to start against Scotland in Japan. Johnny Sexton was not one of them. There's now news of another injury worry for their indispensable fly-half.
Conor Murray and Cian Healy, two more major forces, left the field early on Saturday. All three are expected to make the plane to Japan, but their injuries can only be adding stress to an already nervy set-up.
Townsend's Tbilisi troubles
Townsend will be aware, and will be no doubt mildly encouraged, by what is happening to Ireland, but his own plate is spilling over. He has those injuries to think about, he's got his own line-out issues to address and he's got decisions to make around who travels to Georgia this week and who stays at home under the protection of a warm blanket lined with cotton wool.
The dilemma is this: Townsend is acutely aware of Scotland's hopeless away record and a win in the hothouse atmosphere in Georgia would be a boost to morale before Japan. The players speak often about their failures on the road. It's an issue that's taken root in their own heads. The only way to get rid of it is to start winning away. Georgia is the last chance before they get on the plane for Tokyo.
The flipside is the potential risk of going full metal jacket in Tbilisi. Can Finn Russell be risked? An injury to the fly-half could be a knockout blow to Scotland's chances of making it to the quarter-finals.
The Georgians, playing a historic first home game against a tier-one country, will be psyched to the gills. At the best of times, they present a monstrous physical examination. On Saturday, in front of a capacity 50,000 crowd, their motivation could get a bit scary.
Taking your most important player out of that likely maelstrom seems like a sensible play, but it diminishes your chances of victory. Georgia don't have a whole lot of danger behind the scrum, but up front they bring a brutality that Scotland will do well to quell.
The Scotland side that finished against France may be different to the one that starts in Georgia
Does Watson travel? The same may question could apply to Allan Dell. The resources at loosehead are thin. If Dell went down, it would be a rugby disaster. Does Townsend want Duncan Taylor on the trip? If the idea is to play as close to a full-strength team as possible in their final warm-up, also against Georgia but at Murrayfield, then Townsend is going to have to be clever in selecting the 23 for Tbilisi, a group that gives Scotland a big chance of pulling off what would be an important win while protecting the irreplaceables.
Nothing has been seen of Fraser Brown, Jonny Gray, Magnus Bradbury and Sam Johnson in these warm-ups. They need game-time - and soon. Nobody ever became rich by predicting Townsend's mindset, but the compromise team for Tbilisi might have Blair Kinghorn getting a start at full-back with Darcy Graham and Byron McGuigan on the wings and Huw Jones and Pete Horne in the midfield. McGuigan, Jones and Horne all have a lot of work to do to make the 31.
Adam Hastings and George Horne is a callow fly-half partnership, but they were excellent together against Argentina in Resistencia and their combination could do with another airing in case of emergency in Japan. Horne warrants a start for sure.
Jamie Bhatti might get a last chance to stake a claim. Zander Fagerson was poor in Nice and needs another run. Brown won't be fit. Stuart McInally should start at hooker with Gray and Gilchrist in the second-row and Matt Fagerson, Jamie Ritchie and Bradbury in the back-row, if he's ready for it.
There's only one game left before Townsend writes down the names of the 31 chosen ones. It's all getting very real now.