Ritchie pickings
TO MANY rugby-loving Scots, the Lions are no longer something they feel a part of, not like before. Not like when Finlay Calder and Gavin Hastings captained the tourists. Not like when Tom Smith went from nowhere to immortality in 1997. Not like when Gregor Townsend and Alan Tait were alongside him on one of the most beloved trips of them all.
Scottish Lions – and most especially Scottish Test Lions – have become such an endangered species that you half expect Sir David Attenborough to do a documentary on them. Hopes are rising, though. It’s a cautious kind of optimism, but it’s there and it manifests itself in people like Finn Russell and Stuart Hogg, Sam Johnson and Sean Maitland, Rory Sutherland, Fraser Brown, Stuart McInally, Jonny Gray and Hamish Watson. And Jamie Ritchie.
The 24-year-old blindside, who has the hard edge and belligerence that Warren Gatland demands of his forwards, plays down his candidacy. He
