While Finn Russell and Sione Tuipulotu present themselves as the fashion icons of the Scotland squad, Ollie Smith is the man with the real inside line into that world.
With the rest of the Scotland squad spending their two days off at the start of this week hanging out around their hotel pool and playing some golf in nearby Antibes, the reserve full-back headed off to Paris to visit his girlfriend, Annabel, who is studying for a Masters in Fashion Management at the city’s prestigious IÉSEG School of Management. It's not a bad change of scene, but the 23-year-old couldn’t quite take his mind off his principal purpose for being in France and the unfinished business of helping Scotland navigate their way to the knock-out stages of this World Cup. “You want to play as much as possible – especially when you lose, you want to right the wrongs instantly,” he said. “But it is nice to have a couple of days off to reset, get out of camp and this environment, so that when you do come back into it you are raring to go again for training.” As one of a group of players who made an impact off the bench against South Africa last weekend, Smith is now keen to show what he can do from the start in Scotland’s next match against Tonga in Nice on Sunday week. “Even to get on the bench against South Africa was an amazing experience, but it would be awesome – a dream come true – to start for Scotland in a World Cup match,” he said. “Playing with guys like Sione Vailanu at Glasgow, we know that Tonga will be very physical and very direct so we’re expecting a lot of that.
"We have played a lot against the Tongan boys at Scarlets and they are tricky, they can do pretty much everything, so it’s not going to be an easy game by any means. “We’ll be watching their game against Ireland at the weekend closely to see where the opportunities lie.
“The big improvement we have to make from the South Africa game is we have to pull the trigger when the options are on, because we were maybe not confident enough in our own skillset in that match.”
