Flower of Scotland beginning to bloom once more

Scott Johnson started work yesterday, as the Australian Rugby Union’s director of rugby, charged with overseeing Wallabies’ coach Michael Cheika and helping to restore the sport and its national team to former glories in an increasingly difficult sporting landscape for the code Down Under.

One of the first questions he faced from the Australian media during his opening press conference was what he had been most proud of achieving during his near six-year spell in a similar post at the SRU, one he relinquished to return home.

“I think we got credibility on the world stage,” Johnson said, before reminding himself that “we” no longer applies to Scotland.

I coached against Scotland for a long time before I went there, but I look at the team we’ve... they’ve assembled now and it can beat anyone.

"That’s from a national perspective and that’s great, but when I look, it goes a little bit further than that.

"The remit, as director of rugby, the two provincial teams have got into the quarter-finals of Europe for the very first time [together], when you consider the budgets and the playing rosters they’ve got to achieve that, it’s massive. They’ve won Sevens tournaments, they’ve got the highest level with the junior age grades, so it’s a collective group and I can’t just say it’s one thing, because I’m most proud of the fact that we got competitive at everything and that’s really good for a country of that size.

“It wasn’t just me, but the rugby landscape improved.”

We sat down with Jaco van der Walt, Pierre Schoeman and Duhan van der Merwe to discuss their life in the Capital since arriving!

Watch the full interview ➡️https://t.co/9yVYcX8soH

Watch them in action on Friday night ➡️ https://t.co/DBalcNQ0K4#AlwaysEdinburgh 🔷🔶 pic.twitter.com/b5ykMbxvp8

— Edinburgh Rugby (@EdinburghRugby) January 16, 2019

Johnson, 56, correctly recognised he was not taking the entire credit for Scotland’s current rugby revival, which this weekend reaches another significant waypoint, with Edinburgh hosting Munster and Glasgow Warriors travelling to Saracens for their respective Heineken Champions Cup quarter-finals.

Judging by the sniffy response to his departure in the Scottish media, his critics may take further exception to his claims. They point to a disastrous spell as Scotland’s interim head coach between the sacking of Andy Robinson in 2012 and the appointment of Vern Cotter in 2014, when the national team under Johnson won just five games in 16 matches, three of them against Italy.

They reminded us of Johnson’s failed attempts to abandon the sevens programme, which preceded World Rugby Seven Series tournament wins in 2016 and 2017, and also of botched efforts to reignite club rugby.

One likened his appointment as director of rugby by the Australians as disproving Abraham Lincoln’s theory in that “it appears that you can fool all of the people all of the time”.

Yet no one can deny Scottish rugby is on the right track, that both Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh are as strong as they’ve ever been under Johnson’s head coach appointees Dave Rennie and Richard Cockerill, respectively, the latter topping a Champions Cup pool ahead of Toulon, Montpellier and Newcastle.

There was undoubtedly a feelgood factor in the Scottish capital this week, as ticket sales for Murrayfield today edged past 35,000 and Edinburgh unveiled four new players for next season, while also tying down crackerbox Test flanker Hamish Watson for another two seasons.

The national team’s stirring comeback to draw against England on the final day of the Six Nations a fortnight ago added further grounds for optimism in Scotland. The resilience shown by Gregor Townsend’s team to come from 31-7 down at half-time against the English and take a 38-31 lead was electrifying, only for the Scots to concede a last-minute converted try and leave Twickenham with a draw and a fifth-place finish in the final table.

Which is at the heart of why wise heads such as Cockerill are still not totally convinced that the Scots are genuine contenders on either the European or the world stages. The world-beating talent is undoubtedly there, but what is lacking is the hard-nosed edge to unleash it week in, week out and from one Test to the next.

“On their day, they have shown they can beat anybody,” said Cockerill yesterday of the Scotland team, the majority of its forward pack supplied by Edinburgh.

“But it’s like probably all the three Scottish teams, it is about being consistent and being able to do it every time they play.”