'It'd be naive to think it's not a big carrot’: Alec Hepburn eyes Scotland RWC shot

Scotland prop Alec Hepburn hopes his summer move to Edinburgh can propel him to the forefront of Gregor Townsend’s plans as a year-long battle to make the 2027 World Cup begins in earnest this weekend.

The Australia-born loosehead previously won six caps for England under Eddie Jones in 2018 amid a productive nine-year stint at Exeter, where he helped the Chiefs to two English titles including a domestic-European double in 2020.

Hepburn qualified on residency grounds after moving to the country as a 13-year-old, but after a five-year hiatus following his last England cap, he took advantage of his Glaswegian father’s heritage to throw in his lot with Scotland in 2024, winning four caps off the bench in that year’s Six Nations.

But since joining Scarlets that summer, Hepburn has only played in one more Test – a defeat in Fiji on the 2025 summer tour – as Townsend has preferred Pierre Schoeman, Rory Sutherland and Nathan McBeth as his frontline choices at loosehead.

The 33-year-old might already have been playing his club rugby in Scotland, revealing he was approached by Glasgow two years ago, before opting for a move to Wales instead.

But having swapped Carmarthenshire for the Scottish capital over the summer, Hepburn believes he is in the ideal spot to press his case for further international recognition in the next 12 months before RWC27 kicks off in Australia.

“Well, it’s a big year up ahead,” he acknowledged. “I spoke about it with my family. I’m getting a little long in the tooth, but my thought was if I’m here, I give myself the best opportunity to hopefully put myself in a position to be selected.

“Being in Edinburgh, you’re literally right under the noses of a lot of eyes and I wanted to give it the best shot this year. Who wouldn’t want it, you know? People would be naive to think that’s not a big carrot at the end of the season, but it means nothing if you don’t play well throughout the season.”

As one of the ‘exiled Scots’ previously plying his trade in the English PREM and then in Wales, there were times when Hepburn was not always available for full Scotland camps or tours, or fallow weeks in the Six Nations, with no financial agreement in place with England’s top-flight clubs over release of players in non-Test weeks.

Not that playing outside Scotland meant out of mind. Hepburn was called into Townsend’s training squad towards the end of this year’s Six Nations, but hopes playing alongside a clutch of regular Scotland internationals will bolster his cause.

“When I was playing at Scarlets or Exeter before that, you’re always far away,” he noted. “You often come in [to camp] the week after because you’re not allowed in certain international weeks. Whether that impacts selection because you’re not going to be there for the beginning of camp, I don’t know – or maybe I just wasn’t good enough!

“But being here nonetheless hopefully removes any of those things and allows me to play alongside a lot of Scotland players. Maybe they don’t get the opportunity to see me doing that playing in other systems and other teams.

“There is stiff enough competition with Suz [Sutherland], Schoemey [Schoeman] and Nathan [McBeth] but I’d love to be involved. People now get to see me day-to-day, how I train and apply myself, instead of just 30 minutes or 50 minutes on a weekend and surmise a judgement from that. Maybe those words will get through and I can show the other lads that there’s a little bit more to me.”

Hepburn’s links to his adopted country extend to the national stadium itself. His great-great uncle, Charles Hepburn, founded a whisky blending company in Glasgow and after selling his business in 1959, became a benefactor of the Scottish Rugby Union, helping to fund the original undersoil heating – then a revolutionary concept – at Murrayfield the same year.

While a picture in the stadium’s President’s Suite marks that contribution, Hepburn has yet to taste his distant relative’s famous ‘Red Hackle’ whisky.

“I still haven’t opened a bottle,” he said. “I guess it would have been fitting maybe when I got my first cap to open it, with all the connections. But from the accounts I heard, it was like paint-stripper! But there’s a bit of family history here and it’s good to be breathing the same air as they did once upon a time.”

Hepburn might have swapped stories with Pierre Schoeman – who has his own whisky brand in partnership with team-mate Duhan van der Merwe – as the prop rivals roomed together last week in London before Edinburgh’s final pre-season game at Harlequins.

Schoeman presents a formidable barrier to Hepburn’s chances of nailing down the No.1 jersey in the big games for club and country, but with the Lions loosehead being eased into the new season and missing Friday’s URC opener against Ulster, Hepburn will get first crack in Belfast.

Fixture

United Rugby Championship

Ulster

11:45

25 Sep 26

Edinburgh

All Stats and Data

“I welcome competition and he certainly does – he’s a very competitive person,” Hepburn added. “But we want to help each other and bring the best out of each other and all week we’ve been chatting about all sorts of things.

“His competitive nature is brilliant because you have to step up to the mark really. But we are different players per se. He’s got some great strengths and I just want to play my game to the best of my ability, maybe move the ball a little bit more.

“I really like the new defence we have got which is line-speed driven – things like that which suit my game. I never think apples are apples. He’s great and we just play slightly different games.”

While quality props traditionally mature later than other positions, Hepburn was shocked to find on arriving at Edinburgh that he was the second oldest player in the squad, with only veteran lock Grant Gilchrist, 36, longer in the tooth.

But with a clutch of established internationals and a host of promising young talent blooded last season, the new arrival believes the ingredients are there for a vastly-improved URC campaign after last season’s dispiriting 12^th-place finish.

“Well, we have the squad to compete against anyone really and the depth of squad – that’s the thing I’ve noticed,” Hepburn added. “I knew a few lads but coming in I was like, ‘Wow, I have never seen so many tall people’, which is nice to see.

“I think it takes years to build a confidence or a belief internally that you know you can win. You can go into games and hope to win, but it takes just a bit of time to have a belief within yourself and the team and trust within the team that you can win against anyone.

“I’ve only played two pre-season games, but I know the lads are very confident in their abilities. We train hard and that also helps breed that. Then I think it’ll just be a case of realising it out on the pitch.

“It doesn’t take much [to become contenders]. [At Exeter] one year we went from losing a few games by under a score and finishing mid-table to the top four the next year. Not much actually changed, just a couple of little bits, a couple of per cent here and there, which makes a big difference, you know?”