Gregor Townsend names Scotland squad

Gregor Townsend names his squad for the summer tour which will see Scotland play Maori All Blacks, Fiji and Samoa.

Transcript

00:00Almost as strong as possible. We know that playing test matches for Scotland and winning

00:10test matches for Scotland is really important so we have to pick a strong squad to take

00:14on the likes of Fiji and Samoa. It's even more important this year with world ranking

00:19points. The World Cup targets made after November so these games are crucial to make sure we

00:25got Beth's chance of being in that top six and getting a better seed in. So yeah, there's

00:31always maybe one or two players that we decided not to select, not because of form but because

00:38we think it's not right for them to go on tour at this time. But other than that, it's as

00:45strong a squad as we can select and the benefit of having that third game, the game against

00:50Manly All Blacks, will mean that everybody in tour will get game time and players that

00:55maybe haven't played as much for us in the past are going to get game time on the tour

01:01and game time for Scotland.

01:02I don't want to say we hope that to happen because that means someone's been injured on

01:16the tour but if someone does get injured then we would like to feel that our players are

01:23in a strong position. Some would have been very close to selection anyway. If they're

01:27playing in New Zealand or in Fiji and playing well then that gives them an even bigger opportunity

01:35to potentially join the Lions tour. And we've seen that we can unfortunately for us for Zander

01:39being injured but there will be injuries on the way to Australia and during the tour in Australia.

01:48But the good thing for our players and those that maybe were closer to selection is they

01:52were so keen to come out and tour. They've had long seasons but some of these players are

01:57in great form. I look at the weekend and seeing Rory Darge and Tom Jordan still playing some

02:04of their best rugby at this time of the season. So that's great for us as we go to tour but

02:09should be also good for chances getting on the Lions tour.