Tommy Seymour may be part of a Glasgow Warriors set-up that is expected to have considerable influence on how Scotland set out to play this autumn, but the British & Irish Lion baulked at drawing too much comparison between the challenge of Test rugby and the step up to playing European competition which saw them fall short last month.
Unbeaten in the Pro14, the Warriors failed in their bid to get their European Champions Cup off to a winning start, defeats at the hands of Exeter Chiefs and Leinster meaning they are almost certainly out of the competition after just two pool matches.
The parallels with having to raise their game to another level when facing Samoa, New Zealand and Australia over the next three weekends might seem obvious, then, as they prepare for their first home matches under former Glasgow coach Gregor Townsend, but Seymour was dismissive.
“I don’t want to get too bogged down in the Glasgow stuff. We are in international camp about and we have three big tests,” he said. “To talk about Glasgow is somewhat irrelevant really. In this environment we have a whole different catalogue of players and a whole new set up and way of going out to approach these three games to how we might approach games at Glasgow. The European stuff has obviously not gone the way we wanted, while the league has been brilliant. We know there will be a massive step up to the international side of things. We are fully aware of the challenges we will face in the next three games and we will approach them as a Scotland side, not as a set of individuals coming from various set-ups.”
Clearly the biggest challenge will be facing New Zealand’s All Blacks since Scotland have not beaten them in 30 meetings stretching back more than a century, but having been part of a Scotland side that was given a massive fright by the Samoans at the 2015 World Cup Seymour acknowledged that the opening match carries considerable risks.
“They have some incredible athletes across the park and it’s not just the size, it’s the agility and the capacity to be athletic,” he noted. “We’ve had a couple of really close games against Samoa, especially in the World Cup pool game. They really put us seriously under the pump in the first half and we were perhaps fortunate to be where we were at half-time because they played the better rugby in the first half.
“Every time they scored we managed to peg them back and that allowed us to be in a position to compete for the game at the end, but we don’t expect any different from them this weekend. People pick up that physicality and the big hits because it’s the most obvious thing about their game but they have a lot of subtlety too. There are a lot of guys who play in our league so I know them on a club level and there are some class rugby players who know how to play the game, who are about more than banging through and bruising bodies, who really do like to play and expansive and entertaining brand of rugby.”
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