Townsend's rare artistry at risk from challenge of Scotland rival

'We won't need motivating. When you run out in front of 70,000 people and hear the anthem, that takes care of itself'

On Monday, in the changing-room at Murrayfield, the Scotland rugby coach, Ian McGeechan, talked to Gregor Townsend, his country's most capped player and arguably the one Scottish campaigner of 24-carat, world-class ability, about the game plan to be deployed in today's international against Romania. But in their chat about tactics, McGeechan had a small bomb to drop. Townsend would see some action against Romania, but he would not start the game; it would be the young pretender Gordon Ross who would wear the No 10 shirt for the opening anthem.

Townsend's heart missed a beat. "It's always a shock to find out that you're not playing from the start," he tells me. "I knew they were looking to play the guys who haven't been involved so much, but you never, ever want to give up your position. At least it's better finding out like this than when the team is read out and your name is not mentioned."

And at least it's Romania, and not South Africa, who come to Murrayfield a week today. That is a skirmish in which Townsend is eager to feature from the start, yet he knows that if Ross performs creditably this afternoon, he might again be sitting on the bench. And Ross, who has been having a fine season at Leeds after limited opportunities with Edinburgh, is making some predictably gung-ho noises.

"I've got to make sure I'm as hungry as possible to take my opportunity because once you get a taste of international rugby you want to get more of it," he said this week. "Gregor's been playing fly-half all season and that's his favourite position so that's where he'll want to play. But if it means pushing Gregor to No 13, then fine."

Not fine for Gregor, though. He has been a fly-half since he was nine years old; before that he played at scrum-half, until the coach's son turned up one day and wanted to be scrum-half. The nepotism upset him at the time, and perhaps denied Scotland a fine No 9, but it also meant the birth of a great No 10. Later, Townsend flirted with football over rugby, but he came from Galashiels, for heaven's sake. Rugby it had to be.

We are chatting in the clubhouse of Murrayfield Wanderers, on a cold, bright Edinburgh morning. Townsend is 29, an articulate, friendly chap, with warm brown eyes, a broken nose and a fly-half's forearms. The squad's preparation for today's Romania game, he explains, has been as if for South Africa. "Our whole focus is on South Africa," he says. "And it has been for weeks. We haven't been talking about Romania, with the idea of getting new moves on Monday.

"We're seeing Romania as South Africa. Obviously they're two very different teams, and we haven't beaten a southern hemisphere country for 20-odd years, but Wales have shown it can be done. They've beaten South Africa a couple of times in the last two or three years. And we can take confidence from the way we played against New Zealand last year. For 70 minutes there were no tries apiece, and it's unheard of for a New Zealand side not to score a try in an international." Which in fact they did – twice in the last 10 minutes – but I take his point.

Besides, if there is a coach who can plot a Scottish victory over the mighty Springboks, then Townsend believes it is the man who – surely temporarily – has dropped him. Having also played for McGeechan for three years at Northampton, there can be few players who know the intense little coach better.

"My first season with Scotland, 1992-93, was, at the time, his last. And of course rugby was an amateur game then. He had a job in Edinburgh with Scottish Life, but I was amazed by the amount of papers he carried about, by his analysis of the opposition. He was streets ahead of other amateur coaches at the time, and I'd always been keen to work with him. This year he's really upbeat, determined that we play to our potential."

McGeechan has some grounds for optimism in the return of prop David Hilton, who has finished the three-year ban imposed following the so-called 'Grannygate' fiasco. In a nutshell – which seems an improbably small image to evoke in the case of one so large – Hilton was declared eligible for Scotland on the basis that his grandfather was born there, but then it turned out that grandad had very inconsiderately been born in Bristol.

I ask Townsend what he feels about the whole murky business of international eligibility?

"Well," he says, "in an ideal world I would want 15 guys from Scotland in the Scotland team, but if there are rules there that other countries are using... We're considered a bit of a joke because we've got a few New Zealanders in the squad, but there are not as many as there were. I think it's five out of a squad of 30; before it was six or seven in a team of 15.

"And look at the New Zealand team: how many non-New Zealanders have they got, from Jonah Lomu on? There are Samoans, Fijians have played for New Zealand... at least every one of the guys who have played for Scotland have been great team men. A mercenary type, who just wanted an international cap, would be found out very quickly."

Speaking of New Zealand, I wonder whether Townsend, like a goodly number of Scots, is hoping that the All Blacks rub English noses into the dirt at Twickenham today? I put it to him straight: is he one of those Scots who celebrate English defeats?

"No, no... no," he says. "Well, maybe in rugby, a bit, but not in football. My wife and and I were watching in a [Scottish] pub when England played Denmark in the World Cup, and my wife jumped up when England scored the first goal, but everyone was really quiet so she had to sit back down.

"Then Denmark went on a break and everyone started shouting, encouraging them to score. I couldn't believe that."

I am surprised by his naïvety. After all, he started playing international rugby three full years after Scotland's famous 1990 victory over England, yet the fans were still clinging on to former glories.

"And as players you can't hang on to those victories, but I know the fans do." He smiles. "We won the championship in 1999 playing great rugby. We won in Paris, we scored the most tries, and we got a great reception in Scotland. But the year after, when we lost all our games but beat England, the reception was much better."

His own international debut, in fact, was against England, at Twickenham in 1993. "I was on the bench, and after 20 minutes Craig Chalmers breaks his arm so I'm on. I remember it being a blur for about 10 minutes, and missing a couple of tackles. But in the second half I was really up for it, desperate for the ball. Unfortunately we'd leaked a couple of tries in the first half – Stuart Barnes had his best game for England that day – but we played pretty well and in the end I did OK. I'm glad I didn't have that 10-minute blur in the second half, and come off thinking: 'I'm not right for this level'."

Manifestly, Townsend was absolutely right for that level. He has won 66 caps since 1993, narrowly pipping Scott Hastings, who gained 65, to become Scotland's most capped international. And, pace Gordon Ross, he intends to add a few more caps yet.

"The World Cup is my big objective. And I don't see why we shouldn't do well. The way the draw works out, if we produce a big game against France, who we've beaten a couple of times in the last five years, then the winners would play Wales in the quarter-final. But if we lose against France then we would probably play New Zealand in the quarters." Enough said.

Let's get back to the here and now. What will it be like in the Scotland changing-room prior to these autumn internationals?

"Well, we won't need motivating. When you run out in front of 70,000 people and hear the anthem, that side takes care of itself. The changing-room will be quite quiet, actually. Things have changed since the days of jumping up and down. The captain and key players will say a few technical things, at the first line-out we're doing this, the first kick we're kicking right, at every stoppage let's keep talking about whether they've changed their game plan, that sort of thing.

"There will be a couple of guys shouting 'let's smash them', but that seems to belong to a different era now. I always remember when the Lions did that video in '97, the New Zealand and Australian players saw it and couldn't believe what was going on in the changing-room before the game. It was so noisy, guys were screaming at each other, while theirs were quiet. That's happened here now.

"Professionalism has made a huge difference. Look at the players now. They can pass with either hand, kick with either foot, put huge tackles in. In 1995 there were guys who could only pass with one hand, who could get away with not tackling. And with me, it was pot luck whether one of my kick-outs was going in the right spot. Now I practise so much, I like to think I get nine out of 10 right."

His game benefited further from four seasons in France, with Brive and then Castres. "Over there I learnt how French backs run differently, they pick their angles before you pass the ball to them, run wider and deeper."

Townsend enjoyed French rugby – "the support, the colour, the noise, it's unique" – but was persuaded this year to return to his native Borders. It has been a tumultuous time in his life both domestically – "my wife had our first baby on my first day of training" – and professionally. Bizarrely, Scotland's rugby heartland was overlooked when the nation's professional sides were being formed. Borders have had some catching up to do, and Townsend has taken a calculated gamble in moving to an untried team.

"Because there's been no professional rugby in the Borders until now, there's a generation of 22- to 27-year-olds who haven't played at the top level, and so there's a lack of quality. Everyone knows now that it was a mistake. There's the same passion for rugby in the Borders as in the south-west of France, or the south-west of England. But we're getting there.

"I never thought we'd get to the level of beating Glasgow five tries to nil, as we did a few weeks ago."

He hopes, too, that the fierce local rivalries between the Borders towns will begin to diminish now that there is a single regional team. But old abuse dies hard. In his first game for Borders, at Hawick, he was lambasted by a member of the home crowd, who shouted: 'Get back tae Galae, ye pailmerk'!"

Apparently, pailmerk is a term of abuse based on the belief that Galashiels was the last town in the area to get indoor lavatories, and that Gala residents still had the mark of an outdoor pail on their backsides while the more fortunate folk of Hawick and Melrose were sitting indoors in comfort.

But if Townsend shows opposing South African backs a clean pair of heels next Saturday, then whether or not his posterior is marked, even the most bigoted native of Hawick will surely forgive him his birthplace. First, though, he has to be selected.

b.viner@independent.co.uk

Gregor Townsend The Life and Times

Name: Gregor Townsend

Born: 26 April 1973 in Edinburgh

Position: Fly-half or centre

Height: 6ft Weight: 13st 3lb

International career: Scotland: 66 senior caps; 157 points; 16 tries; made his debut as a replacement in a 26-12 defeat to England at Twickenham. Lions: Two caps on the victorious 1997 tour in South Africa.

Clubs: Schoolboy-1995 Gala; 1995-1998 Northampton ; 1998-2001 Brive; 2001-2002 Castres; 2002-present Borders.

Career: After graduating from Edinburgh University in the days of amateurism, Townsend stayed at Gala. He played there until leaving for Northampton in 1995. He combined this with working as a banker. Became a full-time professional at Northampton and played much of the time at centre, kept out of the No.10 shirt by Paul Grayson. Left for a successful spell in France at Brive and then Castres.

He says (on joining Borders): "I am delighted to be coming back home. It is seven years since I left Gala to experience new challenges in different rugby environments and to come back home to this ground is just great. I am very excited about the future here. I just can't wait for next season to start. I am always willing to improve my game and this gives me a brand new challenge." They say: "He is a world-class player and his commitment to the side signals the standard we want to set ourselves, and Gregor is a big part of that. It is important to the side to have players of his quality. He is a player we have targeted. He is a player at the top of his game and is playing some of the best rugby of his life." Borders coach Tony Gilbert.