3 hours ago
6
It is 100 years since Scotland played their first match at Murrayfield, but that is the least of the monuments confronting them this weekend. New Zealand’s unbeaten record against them stands at 120 years and counting. Which is to say, Scotland have never beaten the All Blacks, and Saturday represents their 33rd attempt.
The good news is that Murrayfield’s centenary celebrations will culminate in its showcase fixture of the autumn with Scotland given as healthy a chance of victory as they ever have been against these tourists. True, that means little more than that victory has not been ruled out, but recent contests between these two (all at Murrayfield, it should be said) have seen a narrowing of the usual margin of defeat. At times over this past century, those defeats have been hideous to behold. Not so any more.
They remain underdogs. At the time of writing, you can get a Scotland win at 3-1 with one high-street bookie, which equates to a nine-point head start, but most are rating the All Blacks as eight-point favourites. That just happens to have been the margin of victory the last time they played here, in 2022. Rarely can an eight-point win have looked so uncomfortable. Scotland lost the first 10 minutes 14-0, before scoring 23 unanswered points in the next 50.
They proceeded to lose the final quarter 17-0. Gregor Townsend was ashen afterwards, wishing out loud that they could play the All Blacks every year but manifestly tortured by the ongoing inability to beat them.
He is not going into this one cautiously, if leaving out Duhan van der Merwe can be accounted as an overthrow of caution. Scotland’s barnstorming winger is nothing if not bold, but Townsend has chosen to reintroduce the rather more elegant Blair Kinghorn at full-back, now released from his club duties with Toulouse, and shift Kyle Steyn to Van der Merwe’s customary slot on the left wing.
Van der Merwe won his 50th cap last weekend in the 85-0 rout of USA, scoring two tries, but his long-standing partner on the other wing, Darcy Graham, scored three, thus pulling alongside him, on 34, in their ongoing duel to emerge as Scotland’s top try-scorer. Graham, the yin to Van der Merwe’s yang, half a foot shorter and four stone lighter, has racked up his total in 48 Tests. A try here would move him clear at the top.
But that is the least of Scotland’s concerns. The All Blacks demand the subsumption of everyone into the team ethic. Sione Tuipulotu is back as captain in the midfield, where he is joined by Northampton’s Rory Hutchinson on one side, the talisman Finn Russell on the other. Russell is back from Bath and is joined by Ben White at half-back, released by Toulon. D’Arcy Rae keeps his place at tighthead, having started for the first time last week. Behind him, Scotland are going full physical, Matt Fagerson the relative little ’un at 17st, lining up at openside.
New Zealand make three changes to the side that beat Ireland in Chicago last weekend. Two of the three Barrett brothers were injured in that one, including captain Scott. So Beauden lines up on his lonesome at fly-half for cap 143. Ardie Savea is captain.
The game of the weekend, though, will take place in Paris, where France and South Africa reprise their extraordinary World Cup quarter-final two years ago. In the week, Fabien Galthié described this Springbok outfit as “perhaps the best that has ever existed”. Nothing lost in translation there.
after newsletter promotion
The world champions do indeed look formidable, making five changes to the team that swept Japan aside at Wembley last weekend. Among them, Eben Etzebeth returns to the engine room to lend his inimitable style of support to captain Siya Kolisi, who wins his 100th cap.
Galthié has raised a few eyebrows by leaving out Gregory Alldritt from the squad altogether. About as many as his sometime captain raised last week, when he left the camp to play for La Rochelle, quipping that he needed “a little bit of love”. Something may or may not have been lost in that translation. Normal captain Antoine Dupont is back in camp, but this is too soon for him after his ruptured ACL in the Six Nations, so Gaël Fickou continues, having assumed the captaincy for France’s summer tour of New Zealand.
Meanwhile, Ireland welcome back an absent captain of their own, when Caelan Doris lines up at No 8 for the visit to Dublin of Japan, having missed the Lions tour through injury. Jack Crowley continues in the No 10 shirt, while Tom Farrell makes his debut, in the centre, at the age of 32.
