Iain Morrison: Vern Cotter can galvanise Scotland

Vern Cotter, above, will take over as head coach in the summer, a wise appointment by Scott Johnson. Picture: SNS

IT WAS back in 1998 that Welsh rugby had an epiphany of sorts, their very own Damascene moment. It is worth reminding ourselves of this in light of last weekend. The event occurred in Pretoria’s wonderful old Loftus Versfeld stadium.

Professionalism was in its infancy and Wales were bush-whacked by the Springboks who ran out 96-13 winners. It was an utter humiliation for a nation that has always seen itself amongst the world’s elite, stymied only by fate, blind referees and cheating Kiwi locks.

It proved a turning point for Wales, who hired Graham Henry and drew a line in the sand. Enough. Within 12 months they had their revenge, posting a 29-19 victory over South Africa in Cardiff, surely one of the greatest turnarounds in sporting history.

Scotland’s miserable 51-3 defeat by Wales last Saturday won’t be wasted if the experience is used to galvanise the SRU into making some of the changes that are badly needed. The Scots too have their very own Kiwi coach arriving this summer in the robust shape of Anthony Vernon Cotter and, whatever else you may say about Scott Johnson, the SRU’s director of rugby picked a good ’un in the Clermont Auvergne coach.

Cotter’s appointment was endorsed by Joe Schmidt of Ireland, the Six Nations championship-winning coach and a former Clermont colleague. He had this to say: “I think Vern will clarify a few things for the Scottish players, like how scary he is as opposed to the opposition!”

Of course Cotter is only human, he can’t conjure up world-class players from Highland mist. What the Kiwi can do is cajole this group of players into fulfilling their potential, or something close to it, which is not a claim anyone has made on behalf of the man he replaces.

Sadly Scotland won’t win next year’s World Cup (it is a goal, if you recall), but they have a realistic chance of qualifying from their group by beating Samoa and making the knockout stages. The islanders are a tough nut to crack but the Scots would prefer to clash heads with them rather than England or Ireland, two other second-tier countries they could have been drawn against. Scotland lost to Samoa in South Africa last summer, for the first time ever, but beat them in Apia in 2012. It will be a close game but this Scotland team is much better than they have shown in recent weeks and the XV that Cotter picks for that crunch World Cup fixture will bear little relation to the one that got its backside kicked from one end of the Millennium Stadium to the other – perhaps less than half will survive.

The back three should be plucked from Stuart Hogg, Sean Lamont, Sean Maitland and Tim Visser, the latter pair missing almost the entire Six Nations due to injury. The midfield duo of Matt Scott and Alex Dunbar have the potential to be the equal of anything in Europe. Scott came into the Six Nations one match late and hopelessly undercooked on account of the hand he broke against Japan in November so imagine just what fireworks the pair might produce when they are both fully fit.