Stafford McDowall, Rory Hutchinson and Arron Reed all return to the Scotland team for Friday’s final Skyscanner Pacific Tour clash against Samoa at Eden Park. Image: Scottish Rugby / Fiona Goodall / SNS Group 
AFTER taking the unusual step for a tier one nation of visiting Fiji last weekend, Scotland have not strayed any further off the beaten track for their third and final outing of the summer, with Friday’s clash against Samoa being played at Eden Park in Auckland.
But it would be a mistake to regard this match as an entirely neutral venue occasion given that, according to the 2023 national census, 213,069 people in New Zealand identify as Samoan, of which just under 136,000 are based in Auckland (compared to Samoa’s own official population of 219,285).
Certainly, Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend fully expects it to be a big day for those proud Pacific Island expats, and another tough challenge on the field of play as his team look to bounce back from last weekend’s bruising loss in Suva to bring the curtain down of their 2024-25 campaign on a high.
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“We were told months ago that the stadium in Apia in Samoa wasn’t ready to host Test matches again, and I don’t know whether that was something to do with the stadium itself or the television links,” Townsend explained, when asked about the choice of venue for this match.
“But Eden Park is a great venue for Samoa too. There’s nearly as many Samoans living in Auckland as there is in Samoa, so for them to be able to play in front of a bigger crowd than they would have got in Apia, I’m not sure they’ll be too disheartened.
“Obviously, the Samoans that live in Samoa will be disappointed they’re not getting to see a Test match at home. But there’s a lot of Samoans that live in Auckland that will turn out on Friday night.
“In many ways, it will be similar [to the Fiji game],” he continued. “I think we’ve viewed all three teams we’re playing against on this tour as having similar traits: very powerful, dynamic players. Very physical. They might produce something unexpected and the contact area is going to be a real battle.
“We don’t have that much information on Samoa. They’ve not played a Test match since July or August last year – they missed out on the November window. We’ve just seen their team now. It was along the lines of what we thought they would select when we saw their bigger squad.
“They’ve got some quality players, some players that are playing around the world and players that played in the Super Rugby for Moana Pasifika. What we know is they’ll come out all guns blazing. They’re playing at home in many ways in Auckland.
“They’ve got a big crowd behind them. They will have seen what Fiji did at times that gave them success in the game last week and I’m sure they’ll want to repeat that.”
Townsend named his match-day squad for the weekend this morning [UK time] with five changes to the starting XV which took on Fiji. Three of those are enforced, with Darcy Graham off to join the Lions squad in Australia to be replaced on the wing by Arron Reed, while the coach indicated that Andy Onyeama-Christie and Stafford McDowall were set to come back in at blindside-flanker and inside-centre respectively, even if Jamie Ritchie and Tom Jordan hadn’t suffered injuries.
The other two changes see Rory Hutchinson return at outside-centre in place of Cam Redpath to reprise his blossoming partnership with McDowall in the middle of the park, while Gregor Brown has recovered from a concussion to start ahead of the benched Marshall Sykes in the second-row.
“Andy was always going to play in this game from a coach’s perspective, so we would have had to move someone onto the bench or not involve them [in the back-row] out of Jamie, Rory Darge and Matt Fagerson, because we felt Andy had deserved his opportunity,” Townsend explained. “We knew it would be hard for him to be involved three games in a row, so he’s fresh and ready to go. It’s just disappointing that Jamie has missed out with his injury.
“And we’ve got a lot of competition there. I’d love to have involved Alex Masibaka this week, because he went well against the Maori two weeks ago and he’s trained really well. But we feel this is our strongest team and just now Alex is just outside of that squad.
“Another guy who I think has played really well is Josh Bayliss, who played the first two games and has been excellent. So Andy gets his opportunity this week and he’s deserved it from how he played for Scotland before his injury [which sidelined him for a major chunk of last season] but also how he’s came back in to Saracens and with us the last few weeks.
“So we’re looking for him to have a big influence in the game and show his freshness going into the weekend.”
“We were really impressed with how Stafford and Rory combined in the Maori game [two weeks ago],” Townsend added. “They didn’t get a huge amount of possession but were very accurate when we did get that ball, very aligned with how we wanted to play that game.
“They also played together in the autumn against Portugal, so we see that combination in midfield as really clicking. Rory’s a quality player, who makes good decisions on ball, defends really well, so he’s earned that opportunity this weekend.”
Meanwhile, Townsend stated that he has no plans to limit the game time of either Rory Sutherland or Ewan Ashman, who will fly out to Australia to join the Lions as soon as possible after the Samoa game.
“Both players were keen to start,” he said. “There was two separate calls about players from the Lions. Obviously, Darcy going in straight away and being part of the Lions squad, while Rory and Ewan are playing Friday night and they can get to Melbourne on Sunday, the same time as the Lions are arriving on Sunday, and as long as they are available to train on Monday they will be available for the game on Tuesday. We hope that will be the case.
“There won’t be any real consideration on game-time. We hope every one of our players comes through fit. Ewan and Rory were very keen to play.”
In terms of specific areas of the team’s performance that need to improve after the Fiji game, Townsend identified discipline and breakdown as the priorities.
“I think we just need to be more ruthless in the contact area,” he said. “[To be] quicker in support with the ball carrier working hard on the floor, and just not allowing the opposition any opportunities to get the ball back.
“Discipline can be a number of things that the referee can call you up on, but not being offside, just giving them a bit of space, that would be the first one that we can fix. And even those borderline calls that we had at the weekend, we’ve got to take that out of the referee and assistant referee’s hands by showing space around the ruck. So those would be the two areas that we want to drive the most this weekend.”
“I think a lot of our penalties were conceded when we weren’t under pressure and that was probably the most frustrating thing,” he lamented, “There was some excellent defence throughout the game. They’re a very physical side and they had a lot of possession so at times we were really on point, and then, whether there was someone just jumping out of the line go offside or taking out the nine at the ruck, we eased the pressure on Fiji.
“You’re going to have times where maybe you’re defending your line or someone’s made a line-break and their play can force a penalty, but we’re more disappointed in those ones where we felt we were much more in control.
“I think it reminds the players that if you are giving the opposition penalties there’s consequences and the consequences are that you’re having to defend a few more phases, often in your own 22. And those are harder areas to defend and there’s more consequences there if you don’t defend well.
“But it happens in games, it’s never going to be perfect and I don’t want to take anything away from Fiji, because they obviously had some really good moments, and while at times we defended well they were still carrying the ball really hard and it required really good defence for us to repel them.
“I don’t think I’ve seen that penalty count for a while. I think it was 14 against us and the three yellow cards in the end, so that’s going to be hard to win a Test match with those stats, so we definitely don’t want to see anything like that this weekend.”
Five changes to Scotland line-up for final tour outing versus Samoa