It has been announced that Mike Blair will regain his captaincy armband ahead of Scotland’s autumn tests. But interestingly, he will have to share the captaincy with fellow teammate and Scrum Half Chris Cusiter.
Cusiter, under Andy Robinson, captained the Scotland A team to success in the Nations Cup in Romania earlier this year. Andy Robinson while head coach at Edinburgh appointed Blair as the club’s captain and since becoming head coach of Scotland had made it very clear that both Blair and Cusiter would heavily contest for the role of captain.
How do you feel about the captaincy role being shared by players of the same position?
In my opinion, it’s tricky. Both players are of a world class standard and deserve the role just as much as each other. Robinson’s explanation for the decision is: “leadership is not about one person, it’s about developing a number of leaders.” And I just feel his comment doesn’t really make sense.
I feel that if a joint captaincy is to be deployed and to work effectively, both players should be on the pitch at the same time, obviously with two Scrum Halfs, this is impossible.
If you cast your mind back to the England squad of 2003, Sir Clive Woodward and Andy Robinson had a number of leaders who could easily be considered as captain on the field. Although Martin Johnson was captain, leaders like Jason Leonard, Phil Vickery, Lawrence Dallaglio, Matt Dawson, Jonny Wilkinson and Jason Robinson had a heavy presence within the starting team.
Scotland has the experienced players who could step up, Jason White and Chris Paterson could easily fill the role and each have experience in captaining the National side. It seems to me that Robinson should name just one captain, in my opinion, Mike Blair, and have influential players such as Cusiter, Paterson and White fulfilling a form of vice captain role.
Would it be right for the match day captain to constantly change? Should a team have a captain cemented long term rather than it inconsistently changing? Recently I have thought about the selection of captain. Why not let the players themselves decide? Each member of the squad votes and whoever has the most votes is assigned the role.
I am however looking forward to the competition between the pair of 9’s, it will be good for them and the contest will develop them into better players because of it. Both players are as good as each other and Robinson will probably have sleepless nights in deciding who will start. But make no doubt about it, just because one player will start doesn’t mean the other will not have a serious impact coming off the bench.
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