Scotland’s 2020 Six Nations squad – ins and outs

Head coach Gregor Townsend has picked an expanded squad of 38 for this season’s Six Nations, no longer constrained by the 31-man limit for the group that went the to the World Cup. Here’s the On Top Of The Moon summary of who’s in and who’s out since the tournament in Japan.

There have been 3 retirements in the outs column, with a further 5 players not included this time round. Among the ins are 2 men who were late call-ups to join the RWC party and a further 5 who were in the squad for the warm-ups and preparation but didn’t make the final cut at the beginning of September.

Caps

• 6 uncapped players (Alex Craig, Luke Crosbie, Tom Gordon, Nick Haining, Kyle Steyn and Ratu Tagive) have been selected in the squad of 38. Gregor Townsend has so far handed out 26 Test debuts during his time as Scotland coach.
• Another 7 men have been picked who have less than 10 caps each.
• 10 of those selected have never played a match in the Six Nations.
• Stuart Hogg (72) and Jonny Gray (55) are the only players with over a half century of caps – although Finn Russell (49) and Fraser Brown (46) could join them during the tournament.

Player numbers and game time

• 4 players (Alex Craig, Tom Gordon, Nick Haining and Ratu Tagive) are selected for the first time by Toony taking the total included in his squads since June 2017 to 92.
• The head coach has picked 13 Glasgow Warriors, 16 players from Edinburgh and 9 Exiles.
• Only 2 men (Ali Price and Ben Toolis) in the current squad have played some part in each of Gregor’s previous series in charge (Summer 2017, Autumn 2017, 6 Nations 2018, Summer 2018, Autumn 2018, Six Nations 2019, Summer 2019, RWC 2019). Fraser Brown played in the World Cup but missed the warm-up matches – the only group of matches he’s not been involved in during the Townsend era.
• This is the first time under Toony that Peter Horne has not been selected in a squad.
• 72 different players have seen game time in the head coach’s 31 Tests so far.
• No-one has featured in all of Toony’s tests. Stuart McInally and Grant Gilchrist (24 each) have made the most appearances.

Age

• The average age of the squad is 26.9 (RWC – 27.8).
• The backs and forwards have the same average age of 26.9 (RWC – 27.4 and 28.2 respectively).
• There are 5 players over the age of 30. Willem Nel is the elder statesman at 33. The other ‘veterans’ are Sean Maitland (31), Fraser Brown (30), Henry Pyrgos (30) and Byron McGuigan (30).
• At 22 years old Darcy Graham remains the baby of the squad – just a couple of months younger than Alex Craig and Luke Crosbie.

Scoring

• The squad have combined for 126 Test tries.
• 34 have been scored by forwards, 92 by the backs.
• Stuart McInally is the top scorer in the pack with 7 tries.
• Stuart Hogg (19), Sean Maitland (13) and Huw Jones (10) and have provided more than a third of the squad’s total try-scoring output.
• Maitland is the top try scorer of the Toony Test era with 8 tries.

And Finally

With the start of a new Rugby World Cup cycle in mind here’s a look at the squad analysed by position and age bracket, taking into account which future RWCs they might still be available for as well as who might make the first choice 23 for this season’s Six Nations: