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Scotland centre hoping to come full circle after making 2015 World Cup squad

By PA
(Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

Mark Bennett is braced for a fight to secure himself a spot in the Scotland squad for the World Cup next autumn.

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The 29-year-old Edinburgh centre went to the 2015 tournament in England but missed out on Japan in 2019 due to a hamstring injury.

Bennett has won 29 caps for Scotland but, having only appeared in two of the four recent autumn Tests, he knows he has work to do to cement his place in Gregor Townsend’s plans

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“Everybody wants to go to the World Cup,” he told the PA news agency. “2015 was an amazing experience for me rugby-wise. I’ll be doing all I can to get myself another opportunity to experience that and play at another World Cup.

“There are a lot of players battling for a place, but I’ve just got to keep doing what I’m doing. I’m playing some great rugby, I’m playing some of the best rugby I’ve played, so I’ve just got to keep doing what I’m doing and stay true to myself.”

Bennett and his fellow Scotland internationals returned to training with Edinburgh this week following their exploits with the national team.

“The international break was great,” he said. “I loved being back in and around camp. Training was fast, exciting and hard.

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“I’m disappointed I didn’t play more, but that’s just down to the calibre of player we’ve got in the midfield at the moment. I’m working hard and doing what I can to try and get that shirt, and I’ll keep doing that.

“I felt like I trained really well. I thought I did a lot of good stuff in the Australia game. The New Zealand game was tough because I came on at a time when the momentum was starting to swing and the game probably didn’t go as well as I’d have hoped.

“I made one silly error in defence. I need to work on bits of my defence, but I just need to keep doing what I’m doing because I feel like I’m bringing a hell of a lot elsewhere.”

Bennett is excited about Edinburgh’s United Rugby Championship clash with Munster at Dam Health Stadium on Friday night.

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“It’s a huge period for Edinburgh with games every weekend for the next nine weeks,” he said. “The depth of the squad is going to be tested.

“The boys have got to push each other every week. We’re sitting fifth in the league and in every game we’ve lost, we’ve been there or thereabouts so we’re not far off being very good. I feel we’re ready to crack on.

“It’s always a great challenge against Munster. Every time we’ve played them recently, they’ve been tight games so this weekend’s going to be no exception.

“They’re really physical so we need to match them there to give ourselves a chance. It’s an exciting week for us.”

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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
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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.

43 Go to comments
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