Ben Healy impresses Gregor Townsend with spiral kicks as he stakes World Cup claim

“I thought he was excellent,” said Townsend, the Scotland head coach. “To play at 10 you need to have a confident temperament, you need to be calm when things aren’t going well for you, and he showed both of those. His kicking was outstanding. Those spiral kicks, you could sense the crowd thinking, ‘ooft, we don’t often see this’. On a couple of them, it changed us winning a penalty in the 22 and maybe getting to the halfway line to actually being in their 22.”

Healy, 24, is likely to have to battle it out with Adam Hastings for a place in the World Cup squad as back-up to Finn Russell. Blair Kinghorn, another option at 10, is now being seen as more of a back-three option. Hailing from Tipperary, he represented Ireland at under-20 level but his mother is from Scotland and he opted to make the switch last season. He helped Munster win the United Rugby Championship in May but has signed for Edinburgh for next season where one of his team-mates will be Graham. The pair combined well against Italy, and Townsend was particularly pleased with the winger who marked his international return with two tries after missing the Six Nations with a serious knee injury. He expects Graham to have a big role to play at the World Cup and suggested he will be used regularly over the course of the summer warm-up series which continues with home and away matches against France.

“There is no bigger challenge right now in world rugby than playing France, they are the number two team in the world, they are hosting the World Cup and are full of confidence,” said Townsend. “We will be putting out as strong a team as possible over the next two weeks and the way Darcy has played for us in the last few seasons, he’s obviously going to be very much in the mix for that. It was great that he got a game against Italy. He missed the Six Nations and we just need to get him and the back three more ball. He didn’t need to do much for his scores, but it shows his instinct for the tryline. Especially the second one, he has to finish that, but it was created by a solid scrum, and a really good carry by Stafford McDowall. The first one was a solid lineout maul then a really good kick from Ben Healy. That’s sometimes the way for wingers, but Darcy can create other things with his footwork and pace.”

On a day when the heavens opened during the first half, both sides struggled to hold on to the slippy ball but Townsend wasn’t unduly concerned. “From a coach’s perspective, you don’t want a game with no errors,” he said. “You want a win, but you want things to work on during the week. There are bigger tests to come. We want to move forward with the confidence of a win, but knowing we have to work to get better.”

Townsend felt Scotland’s handling and their work at the breakdown would require extra attention this week. “Those are the two [areas] that stand out and that probably could have led to more pressure that we could have exerted in our attacking game. I thought our movement off the ball was good, we just didn’t get to phase four or five enough. It was pleasing that we finished with a try [through Josh Bayliss] which was accurate attack, good passing, good work off the ball and good decisions.”