Hello world!
A few days ago there was talk that this game might have to be abandoned because of Typhoon Hagibis, though Gordon Reid insisted the Scots would happily play through it – “We’re from Scotland. Rain. Hail. It doesn’t matter. We’ve coped with a lot more.” Today, though, the forecast is for sunny skies and no more than a gentle breeze. But will Scotland be able to weather their own storm and emerge from an unexpectedly tempestuous Pool A into the sunlight uplands of the knock-out stages? To do so they need maximum points from their next two matches, here and against the hosts in Yokohama on Sunday. They go into this game with a massively changed team – only Darcy Graham remains from the XV that started the win over Samoa – having decided, not unreasonably, to train maximum firepower on Japan. Russia have been extremely consistent – they have conceded no fewer than 30 points in their three games thus far, and no more than 35 – and make nine changes to the team that lost to Ireland. By the looks of the latest weather forecast there will be plenty of plain sailing on the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of the Shizuoka Prefecture, but will Scotland enjoy similar conditions in the Shizuoka Stadium? Time will tell, and not much of it at that. Welcome!
Here’s Andy Bull’s match preview:
And here are today’s teams:
Scotland: 15-Blair Kinghorn, 14-Tommy Seymour, 13-Duncan Taylor, 12-Pete Horne, 11-Darcy Graham, 10-Adam Hastings, 9-George Horne, 8-Ryan Wilson, 7-Fraser Brown, 6-John Barclay (captain), 5-Ben Toolis, 4-Scott Cummings, 3-Zander Fagerson, 2-George Turner, 1-Gordon Reid.
Replacements: 16-Stuart McInally, 17-Simon Berghan, 18- Willem Nel, 19-Grant Gilchrist, 20-Magnus Bradbury, 21-Jamie Ritchie, 22-Henry Pyrgos, 23-Chris Harris.
Russia: 15-Vasily Artemyev, 14-German Davydov, 13-Vladimir Ostroushko, 12-Dmitry Gerasimov, 11-Vladislav Sozonov, 10-Ramil Gaisin, 9-Dmitry Perov, 8-Nikita Vavilin, 7-Tagir Gadzhiev, 6-Vitaly Zhivatov, 5-Evgeny Elgin, 4-Andrey Ostrikov, 3-Kirill Gotovtsev, 2-Stanislav Selskii, 1-Valery Morozov.
Replacements: 16-Sergey Chernyshev, 17-Azamat Bitiev, 18-Vladimir Podrezov, 19-Bogdan Fedotko, 20-Andrey Garbuzov, 21-Sergey Ianiushkin, 22-Anton Sychev, 23-Yury Kushnarev.
Referee: Mathieu Raynal (France)
Assistants: Wayne Barnes (England), Federico Anselmi (Argentina)
TMO: Marius Jonker (South Africa)
