Johnny Matthews was walking dogs in Elie, the picturesque seaside town in the East Neuk of Fife, with his wife, Mel, and some close friends, when the call came on Saturday morning which blew up his plans for a relaxing weekend away from the rigours of Glasgow Warriors’ notoriously tough pre-season regime – and we can safely say that he was absolutely delighted to receive that rather garbled message from Scotland forwards coach John Dalziel.
“I don’t know if anyone’s been to Elie, but the phone signal is pretty sketchy,” the 30-year-old revealed yesterday, speaking after his first training session as the newest member of Scotland’s World Cup squad currently based just outside Nice on the south coast of France.
“When I’d seen John’s number pop up, I knew he wasn’t phoning for a catch-up, but I was only catching every third word from him, so I ended the call and called him back on WhatsApp so I could hear better. He said: ‘How quickly can you get to Nice?’.”
Dalziel didn’t need to ask twice, with Matthews setting off on a dash across the central belt of Scotland and back in order to make it to the Cote d'Azur as quickly as humanly possible.
“My boots were at Scotstoun, so I had to phone ahead to keep the place open and then shoot through to Glasgow to pick them up,” he explained. “Then I rushed back to Edinburgh, where I live, to pack and get on a 6am flight on Sunday morning.
“It was such a mad rush that it was only once we got to the hotel that it started to feel real. I was very shocked to get the call, but I’m obviously delighted and just looking to throw my hat into the ring to try to get some games while I’m here."
After an excellent 2022-23 season with Glasgow Warriors – which saw him finish the campaign as the club’s top try-scorer with 13 from 19 matches, leading to selection ahead of current Scotland first choice hooker George Turner in the match-day squad for the team’s Challenge Cup final against Toulon – Matthews was perhaps unlucky to miss out on the original 41-strong Scotland training squad for this World Cup.
However, he made the most of the time off that gave him, and is now benefitting from injured duo Dave Cherry and Stuart McInally’s back luck by becoming the fifth hooker to be part of the squad this summer, and there is a very good chance of a first cap against Romania in Lille on Saturday when head coach Gregor Townsend is expected to wrap most of his front-liners in cotton-wool so that they can be fit and fresh for the following weekend’s do-or-die clash against Ireland in Paris.
“I was hoping I had an outside chance of making it into the original training squad, but it’s a pretty settled group and there have been the same three, four or five hookers in the last x-number of squads so I knew I’d have to do pretty well to get in," reflected Matthews. "So, I was disappointed but it wasn’t a shock that I didn’t get in, and to be fair, I’ve had a good summer.
"I got married, came out here for a week to see my best man, Archie Russell [younger brother of Scotland stand-off, Finn, who currently lives along the coast in Monaco], I went to Frankfurt on my stag-do and went to Crete on honeymoon, so I’ve made the most of the 13 weeks off.
"It will become the perfect summer if I am able to cap it off by playing for Scotland in a World Cup.”
Matthews grew up in Liverpool and is a dyed-in-the-wool Everton fan, so the Toffees beating Brentford on Saturday afternoon was an added bonus. He qualifies to play for Scotland through his mother from Glasgow and wore the thistle at under-18s level before a knee injury ruled him out of contention for the under-20s.
His first taste of playing professional rugby was with a struggling Rotherham Titans team which finished third bottom of the English second tier Championship during the 2015-16 season, in between two high-scoring seasons playing for Sedgley Park in England’s National League Division 2 [20 tries in 2014-15 and 29 in 2016-17] before making the move north to join Boroughmuir in the Scottish Premiership for the 2017-18 season.
His try scoring exploits carried in the top-flight of the Scottish club game, and he finished the 2018-19 as the league's top scorer on 19, before joining Glasgow – originally as World Cup cover – at the beginning of the 2019-20 season, then winning his first Scotland A cap against Chile last summer.
“I never thought when I was playing amateur rugby for Boroughmuir that I’d be playing in a World Cup a few years later,” he said. “I was just trying to enjoy it there and take an opportunity if it presented itself, which luckily it did with Glasgow.
“Test rugby is a different beast, but I’ve just got to take it in my stride and try to make the most of it.”
