1
Hamish Watson one of three released by Scotland after Italy loss
By Josh Raisey
Flanker Hamish Watson is out of the Scotland squad ahead of their Guinness Six Nations encounter with Ireland in Dublin this Saturday.
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The 2021 Player of the Championship has been released alongside Jamie Bhatti and lock Glen Young, while the Glasgow Warriors trio of back row Ally Miller, who has received his first-ever call-up, and locks Alex Samuel and Max Williamson have been drafted into Gregor Townsend’s squad.
Not one of the departing trio featured for Scotland in their 31-29 loss to Italy on Saturday in Rome, nor had they appeared in any of the opening three rounds of the Championship this year.
Scotland will head to the Aviva Stadium on Saturday knowing they are still mathematically in the hunt for the Championship, but it would require a sizeable bonus-point victory over Andy Farrell’s side, while depriving them of any points. Even then, they will be depending on France to beat England.
The 2021 British & Irish Lion Watson has been in and out of the Scotland camp over the past two months having failed to originally make the squad.
Six Nations
P
W
L
D
PF
PA
PD
BP T
BP-7
BP
Total
1
Ireland
4
3
1
0
16
2
England
4
3
1
0
12
3
Scotland
4
2
2
0
11
4
France
4
2
1
1
11
5
Italy
4
1
2
1
7
6
Wales
4
0
4
0
3
As a guest on The Big Jim Show recently, the flanker opened up on how his conversation with Townsend went over his dropping.
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“I had a brief conversation with Gregor, when he rang me up to say I wasn’t in the squad,” he said.
“He’ll give you a few work-ons, which was a conversation between me and Gregor so I’m not going to go into it.
“One or two of them you’d be like ‘yeah, fair enough,’ then some you think they’re just pulling out of anywhere just to fill the time.
“I think the one thing that all rugby players realise is that you’d rather just have a completely honest conversation with your coach and for them to be really honest with you.
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“As a player, you can always get better, you can always have work-ons, so I don’t disagree with being given work-ons because everyone can always be way better.”
As spectators we can only generally go on what we see on the pitch - we aren’t privvy to what goes on at training camp. That said, not using Watson this year has surprised me given his performances for Edinburgh recently. Ritchie and Darge, fantastic players though they are, just haven’t fired in this championship and I wonder if the inclusion of Watson might have helped steady the ship a bit on Saturday past.