MIKE Blair has good reason to have the nation of Canada imprinted somewhere deep in his mind as he prepares to captain Scotland against the Canucks in Aberdeen this weekend.
In 2002, Blair made his Test debut in the Thunderbird Stadium in Vancouver, and duly left the field at full-time part of a dejected Scotland team who had just been beaten by Canada for the very first time.
Ian McGeechan, Scotland's coach at th
e time, had introduced six new caps – Blair, Andy Craig, Rory Kerr and Craig Smith in the starting line-up and Allan Jacobsen, Donnie Macfadyen and Ben Hinshelwood off the bench – in a young 22-man squad that struggled to make it into treble figures for combined caps.
McGeechan insisted the tour to North America was one for the future, to blood young players, and while there was inevitable criticism for the 26-23 defeat – which the players drew on to thump the USA 65-23 a week later – the emergence of Blair as a world-class internationalist goes some way to showing the shrewdness of that decision.
Blair admits, however, that even though he marked his debut with a try it was not quite what he had hoped it would be.
"It's funny when you are growing up and dreaming of winning your first cap – running out at Murrayfield and scoring a try and winning the match, all these kinds of things," he said.
"So, it was a funny sort of debut because it was in Canada in front of a few thousand people. I was obviously proud to get my first cap, but we lost the game and it was mixed emotions after that.
"We had played them the week before as a Scotland XV against 'Rugby Canada', which was pretty much their full team and we won pretty well, by two or three tries (33-8, five tries to one, Blair scoring again]. It's nice to meet them again, at home this time, but the big test for us this week is to show what progress we have made. In the games against New Zealand and South Africa we talked a lot about dominating the breakdown and the collisions; this is an opportunity to show we can dominate an opposition and see what happens on the back of that, as opposed to talking about what the opposition can do. We need to have a ruthless edge and show what we can do."
Blair was also on the field the first and only time before now that Scotland played at Aberdeen's Pittodrie stadium. That was three years ago, when Frank Hadden's tenure as national coach began with a first-ever win over the Barbarians by 38-7. It was not as strong as previous Baa-Baas sides, but the manner with which Scotland attacked and scored five tries to the tourists' one delighted the north-east crowd.
Ticket sales for this historic first Test at Pittodrie are close to 17,000, with 3,500 still available, but with the SRU continuing with their unpopular route of not selling tickets on match-days there are less than 48 hours to secure a repeat of the full house.
Canada have named Kevin Tkachuk, the Glasgow prop, in their starting line-up, along with former Stewart's Melville flanker Jebb Sinclair and ex-Cardiff scrum-half Ed Fairhurst, who faced Blair in the Magners League and now skippers the Canucks. He was also in the squad on that famous day for Canadian rugby back in 2002.
Blair hopes the home crowd will ensure there is no repeat of his sour debut this weekend. He added: "We have good memories of the 2005 Baa-Baas game at Pittodrie and hopefully by the time kick-off comes we will have a near full stadium on Saturday.
"If you give crowds in smaller stadiums something to shout about they shout, and I am sure the Pittodrie crowd will get behind us from the start. We have a lot of respect for the Canadian team and they pushed Wales last week, but there is a lot of emphasis on our performance and making the most of the opportunities we get.
"This is a measure of how far we have gone and matured as a squad. There is no reason why we should not be as intense in this game as we have been in our previous two games – it's about setting our standards and living up to them."
The scrum-half could have been talking about his own development since that Canada bow in 2002. He departs swiftly on Sunday to catch a flight south to London where he will join All Black fly-half Dan Carter, Sergio Parisse, the Italy skipper, and Welsh pair Shane Williams and Ryan Jones in the running for the IRB's World Player of the Year Award, to be announced at a glittering ceremony in the evening.
Whether he is judged by a panel of legendary former Test stars as the most impressive player of 2008 or not, just being there underlines quite how far Blair has come in the past six years.
Canada (v Scotland at Pittodrie on Saturday, 2.30pm): J Pritchard (Bedford); S Duke (University of Victoria), C Hearn (Castaway Wanderers), R Smith (Calgary Irish), J Mensah-Coker (Plymouth Albion); M Evans (Hartpury College), E Fairhurst (Cornish Pirates) capt; K Tkachuk (Glasgow), M Pletch (Velox Valhallians), S Franklin (Cornish Pirates), T Hotson (Northern Suburbs), J Jackson (Bordeaux Begles), J Sinclair (Castaway Wanderers), A Carpenter (Brantford Harlequins), A Kleeberger (University of Victoria). Subs: F Walsh (Vandals), M Burak (Cornish Pirates), S Stephen (Plymouth Albion), M Williams (James Bay AA), N Hirayama (University of Victoria), B Keys (Velox Valhallians), AN Other.
The full article contains 961 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
