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Neurologist investigating Finn Russell's weekend availability for Racing

(Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

Scotland’s Finn Russell will be pencilled in for weekend club action with Racing 92 if he safely comes through a Tuesday assessment in Paris with neurologist Jean-Francois Chermann.

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The out-half missed last weekend’s Six Nations match for Scotland against France in Paris due to a concussion suffered during a Top 14 match on February 17, six days before he was due to line out at the Stade de France for his country. 

His absence was a massive blow for the Scots, who lost 27-10 and generally looked uninspired against a struggling opposition that had come into the match under a cloud following its heavy defeat to England. 

Russell was ruled out of Test selection on Tuesday of last week, Scotland confirming at the time that he had not satisfied that day’s component of the graduated return to play protocol. 

It left him making do with BBC TV pundit duty at the match while the No10 jersey was taken by Peter Horne, with Adam Hastings providing cover from the bench. 

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If Russell does come through his neurology assessment and is cleared to play on Saturday against La Rochelle, it will make for nervous viewing for Scottish boss Gregor Townsend similar to what occurred on the previous fallow Six Nations weekend. 

Six of Scotland’s seven players based in other countries had to play club rugby on the weekend of February 17, and Russell’s injury highlighted the risk of the Scots relying heavily on star players contracted to clubs outside its jurisdiction. Scotland’s next Six Nations match is at home to leaders Wales on March 9.

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Russell suffered a game-ending 37th minute collision nine days ago with the ball-carrying Lucas Tauzin, the Toulouse player’s knee colliding with the side of the face of the tackling out-half and forcing him off for a HIA. He didn’t return for the second half, his place being taken by Fijian Ben Volavola.

Racing will be keen for Russell to be available to feature this weekend as the big-spending Parisians have lost their last three league games and have slipped to eighth on the table, two spots outside the play-offs.

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

4 Go to comments
N
Nickers 1 hour ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

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