{"id":723798,"date":"2026-01-27T09:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T09:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/723798\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T09:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T09:04:10","slug":"six-nations-2026-launches-in-edinburgh-as-gregor-townsend-optimistic-about-scotlands-chances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/723798\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Nations 2026 launches in Edinburgh as Gregor Townsend optimistic about Scotland’s chances"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scotland’s rugby head coach Gregor Townsend has said there is plenty for his team to be optimistic about as the 2026 Six Nations launched in Edinburgh on Monday, January 26. It comes after a challenging<\/a> autumn which saw them lose two matches out of four.<\/p>\n

The long-serving head coach came under fire<\/a> in November after his side went from a commanding 21-0 lead against Argentina to losing 33-24 on home soil. They also came agonisingly close to a maiden victory against New Zealand, coming back to draw level before losing 25-17.<\/p>\n

Townsend believes the agonising nature of those defeats has helped sharpen minds within his squad, and he is also heartened by the fact all of his key players appear to be fit heading into the championship.<\/p>\n

The fact almost half of his group is made up of players from an in-form Glasgow side is a further source of encouragement.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the launch event at Edinburgh Castle<\/a>, he said: \u201cI think, just in terms of our squad, we\u2019re in a better place because just now over 90 per cent of the players are available for selection.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat hasn\u2019t always been the case. I do believe the way the team played throughout 2025 in some of our biggest games, when I think back to New Zealand, France, England, the players have performed at a really high level.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though we had those painful moments of not winning against New Zealand and Argentina, I see that as positive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were not positive at the time, obviously, but what we learned can help us when we\u2019re going to have those moments of adversity, when the opposition score a try or break our line, so we\u2019re better prepared now to deal with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think also the fact Glasgow are playing really well and a lot of our players come from the Glasgow team, that is a positive going into the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n

Townsend is waiting for further news on fitness issues surrounding Liam McConnell, Dave Cherry, Jamie Dobie and Ewan Ashman but he was confident they would all be available for the championship opener away to Italy a week on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The head coach is preparing for his ninth Six Nations in charge of Scotland and after back-to-back fourth-place finishes in the last two tournaments, he acknowledged they require more consistency to contend at the sharp end.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI think the Six Nations has been pretty open the last few years. You know that every team is going to face a tough day, even the best teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know that you can\u2019t drop below a certain level of performance if you\u2019re seen as someone who can win the tournament.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur challenge is putting those learnings (from autumn) into place, rising to the challenge, but also doing that for five games. Last year we played four games at a really good level, but we didn\u2019t play the fifth one against Ireland anything like we needed to.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can get that same level of performance over five games with the learnings that we\u2019ve had since then, we\u2019ll be a very competitive team.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scotland’s rugby head coach Gregor Townsend has said there is plenty for his team to be optimistic about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":723799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,27651,4884,93212,712,16,15],"class_list":["post-723798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edinburgh","tag-britain","tag-edinburgh","tag-edinburgh-castle","tag-great-britain","tag-gregor-townsend","tag-scotland","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115966264254750779","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/723799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}