Borders rugby veterans Lana Skeldon and Chloe Rollie reach international appearance milestones
Saturday’s 30-10 defeat for Scotland’s national women’s rugby team hosting Australia marked an appearance milestone for both Borderers fielded by interim head coach Dave Butcher.
Starting hooker Lana Skeldon is now her country’s second-most-capped player outright after playing her 90th international game in front of a crowd of 3,191 at Edinburgh’s Hive Stadium, having previously shared that claim to fame with now-retired loosehead prop Heather Lockhart, and replacement full-back Chloe Rollie is third on that list jointly with Lockhart, 54, after being brought off the bench for her 89th cap.
Though only ten caps short of a century, Hawick’s Skeldon, 32, is 25 shy of the record held by former No 8 Donna Kennedy, the 54-year-old having made 115 international appearances between 1993 and 2010.
The No 2 played for 58 minutes before making way for Aicha Sutcliffe and Jedburgh’s Rollie, 31, took over from Evie Wills two minutes later.
No 8 Evie Gallagher scored Scotland’s only try, with fly-half Helen Nelson adding a penalty and conversion.
Australia’s tries were touched down by Desiree Miller, Samantha Wood, Brianna Hoy and Faitala Moleka, with scrum-half Wood also kicking two conversions and two penalties.
That was Scotland’s third WXV Global Series game of September, all at the capital’s Hive Stadium, following defeats by 66-14 to New Zealand seven days earlier and 64-26 to Canada a week prior to that.
They’ve got two more fixtures in that competition coming up in October, both away to Australia, in Sydney on Saturday the 17th and Canberra on Friday the 23rd and they’ll head down under hoping to end a seven-game losing streak, their last win having been back in April, by 24-19 away to Wales in Cardiff.
Captain and blindside flanker Rachel Malcolm says lessons need to be learned from that run of losses if her team are to get back to winning ways, adding: “It’s not a witch hunt and it never will be in this group as long as I’m in it.
“It’s about being truthful with each other and doing everything we can to get Scotland women in the best place possible.
“That might involve taking some harsh criticism from each other but we’re pretty used to that, and I’ve got absolutely no doubt that we’ll continue to grow as a group.”