Experienced pair Jonny Gray and Dave Cherry return to the Scotland squad in time for this year’s Six Nations, while there are places for young Edinburgh duo Liam McConnell and Freddy Douglas.<\/p>\n
The 40-strong squad chosen by head coach Gregor Townsend, comprises 23 forwards and 17 backs.<\/p>\n
Adam Hastings and Fergus Burke will provide competition and cover for star fly-half Finn Russell.<\/p>\n
Ben White and George Horne are the scrum-halves, with Jamie Dobie an option at number nine but thriving on the wing for Glasgow Warriors.<\/p>\n
Captain Sione Tuipulotu is joined by Glasgow team-mates Huw Jones and Stafford McDowall and Northampton Saints’ Rory Hutchinson as the specialist centres.<\/p>\n
The back three selection will come from Blair Kinghorn, Tom Jordan, Kyle Rowe and Ollie Smith, who are all options at full-back, along with Duhan van der Merwe, Darcy Graham, Kyle Steyn and Dobie.<\/p>\n
McConnell, 21, and Douglas, 20, each have one cap and join Magnus Bradbury, Jamie Ritchie, Josh Bayliss and Glasgow trio Matt Fagerson, Rory Darge and Jack Dempsey in the scrap for back-row places.<\/p>\n
Cherry, 35, playing in Pro D2 in France for Vannes, is chosen along with fellow hookers Ewan Ashman and George Turner.<\/p>\n
There are three loosehead props; Pierre Schoeman, Rory Sutherland and Nathan McBeth, with Elliot Millar Mills and D’arcy Rae supporting standout tighthead Zander Fagerson.<\/p>\n
Bordeaux’s Gray, with 81 caps, joins fellow stalwarts Grant Gilchrist and Scott Cummings as Max Williamson and Alex Craig bid to break the established order in the second row, along with Gregor Brown, who also operates at blindside flanker.<\/p>\n
Scotland open the tournament in Rome on 7 February, then host England before a trip to Cardiff on three successive Saturdays.<\/p>\n
France visit Murrayfield on 7 March and Scotland are in Dublin for the final round of fixtures seven days later.<\/p>\n
Scotland finished fourth last year, with third place in 2023 and 2018 their best showings in Townsend’s eight previous attempts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Experienced pair Jonny Gray and Dave Cherry return to the Scotland squad in time for this year’s Six…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-248211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}