Scotland's Summer Tour of the Americas

First topic message reminder :

North American Fixtures

Saturday 6 July: Canada v Scotland, TD Place, Ottawa

Friday 12 July: USA v Scotland, Audi Field, Washington DC

South American Fixtures

Saturday 20 July: Chile v Scotland, Estadio Nacional, Santiago

Saturday 27 July: Uruguay v Scotland, Estadio Charrúa, Montevideo

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/articles/c2504p0qwvyo

Opposition World Rankings

Canada 21st
USA 17th
Chile 23rd
Uruguay 18th

Scotland Squad

[TBC]

Talking Points

Primed to be a development tour, Scotland will face four sides outside the top ten ranked rugby teams in world rugby.  

Despite a poor World Cup and a poor Six Nations, Scotland will have an opportunity to develop fringe players. Who knows, perhaps we will have a bolter or two link up with the squad?

With Glasgow flying high in the URC it is highly likely that many soon to be capped players will come from the Warriors camp.

With Russell and Darge being Co-Captains for the Six Nations will we see a new Captain selected to lead the squad this Summer?

Which players will most likely be rested and not be a part of the touring squad?

I far prefer that Scotland do tours like this. Blooding young players in games we should win rather than either flogging the established players and / or getting a stuffing. We could do with Argentina on this tour tho

https://www.theoffsideline.com/u20-world-trophy-scotland-japan-preview/

Don't know what he is eating to be 131kg at 18 but Blyth-Lafferty sounds a prospect. Starting ahead of Norrie from the Glasgow academy, sounds like he could be a new Zander. Fingers crossed for a good result on Sunday

One of the things that came through was how much he was mentored by WP Nel...

Well not anymore, the SRU made sure of that!

Boneheads.

He seems pretty hefty, great to see young players making their way up the ranks. I hope they can beat Japan and regain their place in the top comp.

If any of you lovely people haven't seen the u20 game tonight, it's well worth a viewing. They were excellent against a very decent and high pressure Japan side.  Many of our lads look like fantastic prospects. It was a really great game to watch

Any of you awake enough to watch the game????

I couldn't get away to DC to watch the game, but hopefully my club, Morris Rugby, makes a nice impression in the stands.

It's morning in Australia, so assuming I can find some way of watching it I'll be watching!

For one of the few times a match kicking off at a civilised 6:30pm.  Just finished my pizza, going to crack a Tennent's, in honour of my northern friends, and sit back and watch.  

By the way, that is a far too good of a back row for the American team to handle.

Good luck finding a stream.

Managed to watch this one, what a weak crowd turnout! Hope a few more people filter in before kick off.

bsando wrote:Managed to watch this one, what a weak crowd turnout! Hope a few more people filter in before kick off.

Yeah, poor turnout. Wrong place and time for a match in DC.

My club has about a dozen guys heading down to DC from up here in north Jersey. They will fill the place up - they were mostly props who like to live well in their Rugby retirement....

By the way, do you have the American broadcast team?

McGinty just made a big boy smackdown hit. Never knew he could do that.

Pretty easy for Duhan

This could be a long night for the Eagles

I've got a link if anyone interested

Hastings' chips over the top not really working - too long.

I have the American commentators - not too painful so far.

Scotland looking pretty rusty. Two lineouts in a row turned over.

When they can catch it, they look dangerous though.

Ashman scores from a line out way out

14-0 Scotland

Craig could be in trouble here

Surprised that wasn't looked at more closely - was a reckless head charge in a ruck. Potentially just hit the top of shoulder instead of the head though.

Seen cards given for less!

By the way, it has got to be hot and bloody humid in DC like the Amazon rainforest. Most of DC is built on landfill.

That card was coming, USA giving away far to many pens

Like the card, that maul try was coming as well.

Ashman scores again from a short line out.

Hastings not been great from hand but deadly off the tee

21-0 Scotland

Well a comedy of errors down near the Scottish line and Bonni goes over for the Eagles. Pretty sloppy play.

21-7 Scotland

It is incredibly humid out there. Players look like they are melting and everyone struggling to hold the ball.

Well the game needed a USA score, get the crowd into it. Really sloppy play from Scotland and Fagerson at the back of the scrum after good work to turnover the USA lineout.

Need to be careful this game doesn't become uncomfortable!

Big goal line defence from USA. Scotland making hard work of it. With penalty advantage we should be looking wide - we've got enough dangerous runners to use.

It's all about the maul tonight

Just better technical profeceiency from Scotland

28-7 at HT

This may be a comfortable win in the end, but not been that pleasing on the eye so far!

A professional first half from Scotland, keeping to the set piece and not playing too fast and loose given the high humidity.

The game should be dead and buried now so you wonder how Toonie will play the 2nd half - not sure we'll learn much by playing the same way and scoring 3 more maul tries?

Agree, this has been harder than it needs to be. Seems like Scotland are deliberately working a more limited game plan. And this will probably be a big score in the end.

As it turns out there are 15k at the game tonight. Max. capacity is 20K.

doctor_grey wrote:By the way, do you have the American broadcast team?

Nope TNT Scottish commentary. How is the US commentary? Stadium looks a bit fuller now which is good!

USA commentary is pretty good - they actually know their stuff which makes a difference! An English guy and kiwi involved too.

Except they can't pronounce the word Craig properly.

RDW wrote:USA commentary is pretty good - they actually know their stuff which makes a difference! An English guy and kiwi involved too.

Except they can't pronounce the word Craig properly.

The English guy is Will Hooley, former Saint. Don't know the Kiwi, but one of the Americans is Mike Petrie, former USA 9 for quite a few years and was a pretty good player.

How do you miss pronounce Craig!? 

Seems pretty humid and greasy out there. A lot of basic handling errors throughout this match. 

Great try from Horne!

Pretty turgid stuff now

I am struggling to stay awake

Apparently DC empties out each summer because of the heat and humidity. In a way similar to India under the Raj when the government went into summer quarters the mountains to hill stations like Shimla and Mussoorie.

BigGee wrote:Pretty turgid stuff now

I am struggling to stay awake

It must be past your bed time. Cripe, it's almost mine over here....

Well the conditions certainly played a part, but a comfortable win feels a bit flat really with no fluency from Scotland, but got out of jail by a dominant set piece.

I am off to bed as they head off to South America

Yeah I fell asleep a bit during that second half. Hard watch but job done in tricky conditions. Goodnight!

I know you will have no sympathy for me, but I have the England match in 6 hours....

A very professional job in very tough conditions against what was a very poor USA team. If they play like that then there is no way they reach the next world cup, even their star player AJ MacGinty had a shocker .

First thing I will say is that I feel like Duhan was trying to hard to break the try scorer record especially once he'd equalled it. I also don't believe we really saw much of Kyle Rowe's line breaks apart from a couple of occasions and even our centre Huwipulotu pairing were relatively quiet in terms of line breaks, in fact I don't think any of the back division really showed what their capable of, Kyle Steyn should really have scored in the corner not long before Matt scored.
Despite what @BigGee says above, I feel Adam Hastings actually had a good game, his kicking was on point.

2 wins from 2 so far this summer, what more can we ask for .

Not one for the ages but did the job. Don't think Toonie or the players really would have learnt much from that.

Conditions were definitely a leveller as it forced Scotland to play at lower tempo, otherwise we probably would have put another 20 points on.

Fair play to the yanks though they were physical and showed defence defence at times.

The memories of 2018 banished!

RDW wrote:Not one for the ages but did the job. Don't think Toonie or the players really would have learnt much from that.

Conditions were definitely a leveller as it forced Scotland to play at lower tempo, otherwise we probably would have put another 20 points on.

Fair play to the yanks though they were physical and showed defence defence at times.

The memories of 2018 banished!

Still time for a classic toonie shock loss to Chile or Uruguay!

Do we lose the non-Scotland based players for the South American leg? If so, that will leave us with 15 forwards, 13 backs and 3 development players.

Given the number of players left at home, it's great to have 50+ players capable and available for our national squad.

The first game of the South America leg is still within the international windows, so players based outside Scotland could still play in that match.

Most of those players are still on the fringes of the squad and I suspect he will want to give them another game, so they will likely travel down there for the first game.

I imagine it is some of the more seasoned internationals who will head home now.

We likely get an announcement about that maybe later on today or tomorrow

Cheers Big Gee. It will be good to get more experience for the youngsters.

I see that another Scottisg youngster has committed to France for regular game and experience- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgr5vj7yqpqo

Anglobraveheart wrote:Cheers Big Gee. It will be good to get more experience for the youngsters.

I see that another Scottisg youngster has committed to France for regular game and experience- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgr5vj7yqpqo

It is a function of a lack of spots. SRU don't have much money and have a fair few different priorities which may preclude sending many to Stade Nicois for a couple of years of development.

Hopefully the SRU start working harder to support the players not getting a contract in Scotland to make the move abroad.

I see Glen Young is out of the tour, having sustained a pectoral injury in the gym.

A shame for him, as he was quite likely to have played in those games. It might mean Cummings has to hang around for the rest of the tour now, as we will certainly lose Johnson for the last game, being French based.

Re locks, Gregor Brown has covered there for Glasgow this season.