BBC Scotland’s chief sportswriter Tom English has been answering some of your Scottish rugby questions.<\/p>\n
Ethan asked: Any predictions for either Autumn or Six Nations Scotland bolters? With how well Dan Lancaster and Fergus Watson played in the Glasgow warm-up games I could see the latter getting called up for the autumn\u2026<\/p>\n
Tom answered: I did a depth chart and I got to 55 names very quickly and none of them really come into the bolter category.<\/p>\n
On Lancaster, he’s got five fly-halves ahead of him, so I can’t see him making an appearance in the short term.<\/p>\n
Watson had an eye-catching performance against Northampton – a full-back operating on the wing. I really hope he gets a decent amount of game-time for Glasgow because he looks to have a lot going for him.<\/p>\n
With Huw Jones recovering from surgery and probably unlikely to make the autumn, Gregor Townsend could do with another outside centre in the squad.<\/p>\n
He has Cam Redpath, Rory Hutchinson and, I guess, Sione Tuipulotu and Stafford McDowall could do a job there as well even though they’re natural 12s. Edinburgh’s Matt Currie, if he can recover from his own injury worries, has a lot to play for.<\/p>\n
Alan asked: How much will the Warriors miss the likes of Tom Jordan, Jack Mann, Henco Venter, etc? Why can’t we hold on to our best players?<\/p>\n
Tom answered: Jordan’s exit is a very sore one for Glasgow because he’s three players in one – a centre, a fly-half and a full-back – and on his day he’s seriously good in all three spots.<\/p>\n
His versatility was so important to Glasgow when they won the URC. It’s impossible to replace a Swiss Army Knife player like Jordan on Glasgow’s budget.<\/p>\n
Mann is very good but Glasgow are not short of back-rows, both experienced and emerging. Venter is slightly different in that he was an incredibly consistent frontliner who led that back-row when the Test players were away. His loss will be felt when the Test guys are not available<\/p>\n
Why can’t they hold on to their best players? Well, they held on to most of them. Jordan, Venter and Seb Cancelliere were the main ones they couldn’t keep. Why? Part financial reasons, part wanting to give space for homegrown players to grow and, possibly in Jordan’s case, just delaying negotiations too long and losing him as a consequence.<\/p>\n
David asked: Will the financial pressures on both Edinburgh and Glasgow result in more Scotland-qualified young talent emerging this season? If so, is that not ultimately a good thing ?<\/p>\n
Tom answered: It should do and, if it does, then it’s unquestionably a good thing. In fairness to Glasgow, they’ve given opportunities to young players right from the moment Franco Smith took over.<\/p>\n
That’s why him staying until 2028 is good not just for Glasgow but for Scotland. He already has delivered quite a few young players to Townsend’s squad and I think he’ll keep doing it.<\/p>\n
Edinburgh have lost so many experienced players they’ll have to look to their young guys. We have Sean Everitt on the BBC Scotland Rugby Podcast this week and he sounds really excited about bringing in the next wave.<\/p>\n
Everitt mentioned young scrum-half Conor McAlpine in a way that suggested he could feature prominently now that Ali Price is away. The way is a little clearer now for the likes of Jack Brown, Ollie Blyth Lafferty, Liam McConnell and Freddy Douglas. All very talented young players.<\/p>\n
Over at Glasgow you could say the same about Fergus Watson, Seb Stephen, Macenzzie Duncan and others. And, remember, more established players like Max Williamson, Alex Samuel, Jare Oguntibeju and Gregor Hiddleston are still young.<\/p>\n
I’m really looking forward to watching who comes powering through this season.<\/p>\n
David asked: With some recent surprising results in the Rugby Championship, might see the first Scotland win over the All Blacks this autumn?<\/p>\n
Tom answered: We live in hope. The Rugby Championship has been magnificent with all four nations really delivering some exceptional stuff.<\/p>\n
New Zealand got walloped by the Springboks last time around but beat them the game before that. They got beaten by the Pumas but beat them 41-24 the week before.<\/p>\n
It’s been brilliant and dizzying. With home and away fixtures against the Wallabies to come, the All Blacks are not favourites to win the championship.<\/p>\n
Every time they’ve played at Murrayfield in their past nine visits going back two decades they’ve done so as Rugby Championship winners\/Tri Nations winners. They had an aura that maybe has been chipped away at a little bit in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
The week before they come to Scotland they’re playing Ireland in Chicago. So that’s a lot of tough games, including the Rugby Championship, and a lot of hard travel before they hit Edinburgh.<\/p>\n
I don’t know if Scotland will beat them – let’s check how things are on the injury front closer to the time. But given all the rugby New Zealand will have played – and they might have had another defeat or two to undermine their confidence – there’s a definite chance. Possibly the biggest chance in quite some years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BBC Scotland’s chief sportswriter Tom English has been answering some of your Scottish rugby questions. Ethan asked: Any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-164174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}