Come next Monday and the start of the All Blacks week, it will be exactly seven years since Darcy Graham made his Scotland debut.
The Edinburgh wing has experienced so much and added so many layers since those six minutes off the bench in a Cardiff defeat by Wales, but who and what he is has remained gloriously unchanged.
A deeply talented performer, Graham’s outlook is uncomplicated. He loves what he does, he does it bloody well, and people love him for it.
“That enjoyment never goes away,” he says, sitting in the front row of Murrayfield’s west stand as ground staff prepare the pitch for the November series opener against USA this Saturday.
“Like any true Scotsman, I’ve dreamed of playing here all my life. I find coming here to play, or even just to do something like we’re doing today, very special every single time. That never changes. I’ll never lose that, especially when I retire and become a fan: Murrayfield will always hold a special place.
“Can I see myself sitting up here as a punter when I’m finished, enjoying a pint and a dram and watching the next generation? One hundred per cent I can. It’ll be tough, but I know I’ll just remember pulling on the jersey and how special it is, knowing what the boys on the pitch are feeling, knowing you’ve been there, done that.
“I want to be world class. I want to be a world-class winger. Once I finish, I want people to say I was world class. That’s where I love the competition that me and Duhi [his fellow wing, Duhan van der Merwe] have in the squad now. Both Kyles [Steyn and Rowe], Arron [Reed], they push us. When they play they’ve all left the jersey in a better spot.
Graham scores one of his 31 tries for Scotland, against Wales in the Six Nations earlier this year
JANE BARLOW/PA
“If you don’t have that competition, it’s easy to get lax. It’s easy to slip up. I’ll never forget the last World Cup. I didn’t play well enough against South Africa and Gregor [Townsend, the Scotland head coach] dropped me to the bench in the Tongan game. I was absolutely gutted but it just lights a fire in the belly that you’re not quite good enough. You have to go away, look at your game and see how you can get better. And competition is the only way to get better.”
Many would argue that Graham, who is at Murrayfield to help launch a limited-edition whisky to mark 35 years of The Famous Grouse’s sponsorship of the Scottish game, has been world class for some time. Even if a succession of injuries cost him big chunks of the past few seasons, his Test record stands at 31 tries in 47 caps, with only Van der Merwe (with 32) having scored more often in a Scotland shirt.
One of Graham’s most memorable tries came in the 2022 meeting with New Zealand when he intercepted a pass from David Havili and ran in from halfway. Shortly after, he almost had an even better one, when only the slightest brush of his left big toe against the touchline denied him an astonishing acrobatic score.
“I thought I’d got it, because I knew I’d kept my outside foot over the line, in the air, but yeah, it was actually my inside one,” Graham, 28, says. “It was probably about half an inch difference. As they say, it’s a game of inches. But that’s all the more fuel to the fire to go and do it this time.
Graham scored one of his most memorable tries against the All Blacks at Murrayfield in 2022, one he says will always be part of his career “highlights reel”
ROSS MACDONALD/SNS
“The one I did get is one of those that’s always going to be in the first part of my highlights reel. It’s probably one of my favourite Scotland tries, especially at Murrayfield. It’s what you dream of, isn’t it? Running in from halfway against the All Blacks. I can still feel the energy from the crowd, the place just erupting when I got the ball and set off.”
The Scots made a painfully slow start that day, shipping two tries in the opening seven minutes. They then scored 23 unanswered points to be in with a real chance of a first win in a then 117-year-old fixture, only for a Jack Dempsey yellow card to trigger a final-quarter collapse and New Zealand to come home 31-23. Albeit against truly elite opposition, the defeat continued the general theme of the Townsend era: close but no cigar. They have still never beaten the All Blacks.
“We need that mindset from minute one, that we can compete with these boys. We need to be on it for that whole 80 minutes,” Graham says. “It’s hard because we very rarely get to play against them. I think this is only my second time in seven years, which is crazy. I’d love to play them a lot more, and then we would start feeling that confidence a lot more. We would start believing.
“We went through that with England: we went a while without beating them, and then once we beat them, it was like, we can compete with these boys, and we ended up, for the next few years, running riot. Once you do it once, that’s it. The monkey is off the back.”
Graham is convinced that the knowledge brought back by Scotland’s British & Irish Lions contingent can play a vital role. His own Lions experience was “the most mental rollercoaster” — overlooked for the initial squad, he was called up for the final midweek game against a First Nations & Pasifika XV. Minutes after scoring with a trademark sharp finish, he left the field in tears having suffered the ankle ligament damage which meant he missed the start of the URC season.
Graham scored the Lions’ second try on his debut against a First Nations & Pasifika XV in July…
DAVID ROGERS/GETTY IMAGES
… but left the field in tears shortly afterwards because of an ankle injury
DAVID GIBSON/FOTOSPORT/SHUTTERSTOCK
“Right from the start, I was determined not to let the injury ruin my experience,” he says. “It lights that fire inside you for the next four years. I’m like, ‘I want to do that again. I want to do the whole tour.’ I learnt so much from the time there.
“When you actually train with the Irish boys and English boys, you get that confidence and you’re like, ‘Oh, we’re the same. They’re human like us.’ The amount of Scottish boys we had in this Lions squad, we’ll take massive belief from that.
“Even in the short time I was there, I’ve learnt so much. I’m excited to bring that back and see how we can implement that into Scotland’s game. It’s only going to benefit us.”
Townsend, who recently signed a contract extension taking him to the end of the 2027 World Cup, believes that the squad is in a sweet spot of age, experience and technical maturity. Key to them ending up with something tangible to show for it will be the efforts of a back three where Blair Kinghorn also struts some highly impressive stuff.
“Gregor’s encouraged me the whole time to get my hands on ball, go looking for it,” Graham says. “We [the back three] want to be touching the ball ten-plus times in the game. If we do that, we tend to have a good game.
“There are so many caps in the group now. Even I’m creeping up on 50, so are the likes of Duhan [49] and Pierre [Schoeman, who has 42], and even the young boys coming in, they’ve racked up a lot of caps very quickly. That experience is there, but now we need to put that performance on the pitch and do something no Scotland team has ever done before.”
The Famous Grouse celebrates 35 years of sponsoring Scottish Rugby with the release of a limited-edition bottle “Time to Celebrate”. The commemorative bottle, along with tickets to an upcoming game, can be won in a prize draw via The Famous Grouse’s Facebook page
Scotland’s autumn fixturesNew Zealand November 8, 3.10pmArgentina November 16, 3.10pmTonga November 23, 1.40pm