Blair looking to inspire Scotland

Stand-in Scotland captain Mike Blair believes he and Jason White are similarly inspirational on the pitch – despite their very obvious differences.

Stand-in Scotland captain Mike Blair believes he and Jason White are similarly inspirational on the pitch – despite their very obvious differences.

Blair has taken over the captaincy from White for Scotland's clash with Ireland this weekend, after the blindside flanker was ruled out of the match because he is still recovering from a head injury he suffered against Wales two weeks ago.

While White's game is based around power and bravery, Blair is more of a neat and nimble tactician – but the scrum-half insists that fundamentally they have very similar attitudes towards leading the team.

“Jason and I will vary a bit in how we approach captaincy but our principles are the same – we both want to lead from the front,” he explained.

“I'm going to try my hardest in the game and I want to have moments in the game, whether it be with a tackle or a break or something else, where the rest of the players say to themselves, 'let's follow him'.”

Blair is aware he is taking over the captaincy at a time when Scotland are desperately in need of a boost after disappointing performances against France and Wales.

But he insists there has been a positive mood in the camp throughout the build-up to this game.

“Obviously there's a bit of pressure on the team this weekend, but we're trying not to look at it like that too much. We're concentrating hard on putting a performance in,” he said.

“We've not played enough rugby yet, we've not shown our hand in the first two games – so there is a bit of pressure that comes with that – but we're just going to try to relax, enjoy ourselves and play some of the rugby which we know we are capable of playing.”

Scotland are facing the prospect of a second consecutive Wooden Spoon, but Blair insists he is comfortable with the responsibility of leading the national side into battle at the weekend.

“A scrum-half is a leader on the pitch whether he is captain or not. A lot of the stuff a team does will go through the scrum-half because he's the link between the forwards and the backs, so in that sense I think scrum-half is a good position to be captain,” he said.

“I've also had a fair bit of experience with captaincy from school and filling in with Edinburgh, so it is something that I am fairly used to.

“And you expect help from the players around you as well. Within the squad, we have a lot of guys sitting on 30 or 40 caps, and guys over and above that with Andy Henderson, Chris Paterson and Nathan Hines – so we've got a good spread throughout the team.

“Mossy [Chris Paterson] has obviously captained Scotland before, Nathan Hines is captain for Perpignan and Allister Hogg is Edinburgh captain as well – so I expect to get a fair amount of support from them.

“I think the days have gone when the captain makes all the decisions, now you have leaders throughout the team, and that is one of the things we are trying to expand on within the squad – to have leaders in different positions.”