{"id":595329,"date":"2026-04-09T09:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T09:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/595329\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T09:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T09:12:14","slug":"womens-six-nations-2026-scotland-are-no-longer-underdogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/595329\/","title":{"rendered":"Women’s Six Nations 2026: ‘Scotland are no longer underdogs’"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the start of a new World Cup cycle and with a new coaching team in place, there’s a sense of a new page being turned in this Scotland set-up.<\/p>\n

Bryan Easson departed after five years following that quarter-final exit to England, with former United States head coach Sione Fukofuka taking over.<\/p>\n

Captain Rachel Malcolm says Scotland want to get to the stage of “fighting in that top four, top five in the world”, but warns with a new coach and a host of new players, the team may have to endure a step back to take a few forward.<\/p>\n

Thankfully the build-up to this Six Nations has been less stressful than prior to the World Cup, when the squad was angered by a perceived lack of respect<\/a> over contracts that left several players facing unemployment after the tournament.<\/p>\n

Malcolm was in the thick of it as captain and spokesman, in negotiations with the Scottish Rugby hierarchy and in outlining the players’ position to the media. <\/p>\n

Clearly not all the scars have healed – especially for those players left without a contract – but the mood music sounds a lot better than it did a few months ago.<\/p>\n

“There is no-one in a position right now as stressful as those girls were put in, which is exactly what I want as a captain. I really want our focus and our energy to be going into the rugby,” Malcolm told the BBC’s Scotland Rugby Podcast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the start of a new World Cup cycle and with a new coaching team in place, there’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-595329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595329","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=595329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}