SCOTLAND’S hopes of making it three Six Nations wins on the bounce over France suffered a major setback last night when flanker Hamish Watson – one of their most experienced, consistent and influential performers – returned a positive Covid test result, forcing the 30-year-old to drop out of the team for this afternoon’s match at Murrayfield.
Nick Haining has been promoted from the bench to start at blindside flanker, with Rory Darge – making his first international start – moving across the back-row to start at openside flanker.
Saracens’ Andy Christie comes into the match-day 23 and will make his Scotland debut if called on from the bench.
Two members of the Scotland backroom team have also tested positive for Covid and will isolate as per Scottish Government guidelines.
Watson is the fifth frontline forward to drop out of the squad, and his unavailability this weekend means Scotland go into the match with a completely reconstituted starting back-row from the England game in round one. Fellow flanker Jamie Ritchie has a long-term hamstring injury, No 8 Matt Fagerson has a foot injury, second-row Jonny Gray also has a foot injury, and loose-head prop Rory Sutherland has hurt his ribs.
Head coach Gregor Townsend spoke before the start of the championship about having the greatest depth at his disposal of any coach in the Scotland team’s history. That claim is now being vigorously tested.
Watson made 17 out of 17 tackles last time out against Wales, taking his total number of completed tackles without a miss on the bounce in the Six Nations to an incredible 180, going all the way back to that crazy 38-38 draw at Twickenham in 2019. He is also a powerful and aggressive ball-carrier for the side (Scotland’s second top carrier in this tournament) and a key breakdown operator.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here