Scotland has ramped up its attempts to attract England-based players with Scottish ancestry to play for them and refused to deny reports it is looking to take a controlling share in the Premiership strugglers Worcester, which would act as a base south of the border.
As part of the new-look Scottish Qualified programme – an overhaul of its recruitment policy – the SRU will also widen its search for players based in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. Eight of the last 14 players given first caps were born outside Scotland, three of whom qualified on residency. And it is England that the SRU believes is the most fertile ground with Worcester, currently for sale, reported to be a potential base.
The Scotland head coach, Gregor Townsend, cited how the Saracens centre Duncan Taylor appeared on the radar after a chance email from his uncle and named Jason Robinson as one of many England players got away. “I think you have to look at every way possible to increase your depth pool,” Townsend said. “There has been a lot of investment in academies [at Glasgow and Edinburgh] and that takes a lot of resource and we’ve seen that through the under‑20s and how well they played this year. But if we just say we do that and forget about all these Scottish-qualified players we’re missing out on a huge amount of players. Back at the time it was just too late but now if we know Jason Robinson is eligible through a Scottish mum we can have a meeting about it.”
While the new programme will look to attract senior players who have not been captured by other nations, it is age-group players where the SRU hopes to have its greatest impact. Townsend revealed that 20-30% of Scotland’s age-group players are based outside the national system but concedes there are many more.
“We’re competing with other nations with these guys too,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure that what we are selling is something they want to be part of. We know there’s three or four Scottish-qualified players in the England Under-18 system this year and we’ve got make sure that first of all we identify them and then give them the opportunity.”
With the residency period set to extend from three to five years in 2018, Scotland are also putting extra resources into identifying players with Scottish parentage, extending the scouting network in the southern hemisphere with Cameron Mather heading up the operation in New Zealand, whose South Island has strong links with Scotland.
Nick Grigg was born in New Zealand but made his debut in Scotland’s last outing against Fiji while Simon Berghan is another “kilted Kiwi” – a concept that perhaps reached its nadir when John Hardie, who qualified for Scotland through a grandparent, was picked shortly before the 2015 World Cup despite having never set foot in the UK.
Townsend also identified back-three players as the positions he is particularly interested in. Tim Visser, Sean Maitland and Tommy Seymour are all regulars for Scotland but none of them came through the national set-up. “There are a couple of positions we have a really good knack of developing: second rows, two of them from the same family [Richie and Jonny Gray], back row has always been a position of strength,” he said. “But ever since my time playing, we probably haven’t produced enough back-three players.”
With only two Pro14 clubs in Scotland, Townsend also revealed there is no intention to follow the lead of Wales, which this week amended its selection policy to make players with fewer than 60 caps who take up contracts outside the country ineligible. “For a number of players it’s really good if they play in Scotland but we’ve got Duncan Taylor and Sean Maitland playing at the European champions which is great,” he said. “As a coach, I have to make sure we work closely with players out of Scotland but we won’t go down that route.”
- This article was amended on 18 October 2017 to reflect the fact that “kilted Kiwi” predated John Hardie’s call-up
