Tommy Seymour said he was determined to repay the faith of Scotland's coach Scott Johnson after being called into the starting side for Saturday's Calcutta Cup clash with England at Murrayfield.
It looked as if Max Evans would be on the right wing after coming on for the injured Sean Maitland during Scotland’s lacklustre 28-6 loss away to Ireland in their Six Nations opener last weekend.
The New Zealand-born flyer Maitland was subsequently ruled out of the rest of the tournament, with knee and ankle injuries.
Rather than start the experienced Evans against England, Johnson has opted to give the Glasgow back Seymour just his sixth cap and first in the Six Nations.
“Johnno has made the call and I’m incredibly happy that I’ve been given my first Six Nations start,” Seymour said. “But I thought Max played well when he came on in Dublin and if he had started I wouldn’t have been surprised. He’s a top-quality rugby player with a huge number of caps for Scotland.
“He’s a great lad as well and was the first one to come up to me and say congrats. There’s definitely not any ill feeling between the two of us.”
Seymour is one of three changes made by Johnson, the coach from Australian, with the most notable his decision to drop the captain Kelly Brown from the match-day 23 and give a Test debut to openside flanker Chris Fusaro.
Seymour is joined in the back division by Matt Scott, the Edinburgh centre replacing Duncan Taylor.
Seymour insisted that despite a convincing defeat at Dublin there was every chance the team could raise their game against England, just as so many Scotland teams have done before, in what will be the 132nd staging of international rugby union’s oldest fixture.
“A week can be a long time in rugby, but by the same token we don’t have much time with the six-day turnaround to dwell on the things that have happened last weekend,” Seymour said. “You need to give yourself time to review the things that went wrong but then you have to move on and get ready for the next game.”
In today’s other game, Ireland and Wales, who both won on the opening weekend, face off at Dublin.
Robin McBryde, the Wales’ assistant coach, said the Welsh were setting themselves up to try to frustrate Ireland in the first half.
“We know that Ireland score pretty much the majority of their points in the first half, so we have got to start well,” he said.
“We’ve got to make sure we are on the money, and if any opportunities come our way we have got to be clinical.”
Of the Welsh team, he added: “We are fortunate at the moment that we have a special group of players.
“They are relatively young, but they have got a wealth of experience under their belts.”
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