Hawick’s Darcy Graham to miss out on round three of rugby’s 2025 Six Nations v England but fellow ex-Green Rory Sutherland named on bench
Hawick’s Darcy Graham has been left out of Scotland’s match-day squad to play England in rugby’s 2025 Six Nations this Saturday as he’s not yet fully recovered from a concussion sustained in the national team’s 32-18 loss at home to Ireland in Edinburgh a week ago on Sunday.
The 27-year-old was timetabled to return to full training tomorrow after a clash of heads with fly-half Finn Russell during that game led to him being stretchered off in a head-brace and taken to hospital but his recovery period has now been extended into next week.
Russell, 32, was able to walk off the pitch unassisted after their collision and passed a subsequent head-injury assessment, though he was kept off for the remaining three-quarters of the match, and he’s been deemed ready to return and included in head coach Gregor Townsend’s starting XV for this weekend.
“They’ve both been training really well,” said ex-Gala and Border Reivers star Townsend, 51.
“They’ve come through their head-injury protocols at every stage.
“Finn we felt was symptom-free much earlier because he didn’t have as big a head-knock as Darcy did.
“Darcy is progressing really well. He’s had no symptoms now for a few days and is onto the next stage of his training, but we just felt that this week was too early to do full contact, so we’ve given him that extra week to recover.”
Graham’s omission means former Hawick and Gala loosehead prop Rory Sutherland is the only Borderer in the Scots’ match-day squad for round three of this year’s Six Nations but he drops to the bench after making his first championship start since 2022 against the Irish.
Sutherland, 32, is currently on 39 caps, 20 of them from the bench, since 2016 and Edinburgh right-winger Graham is on 44 since 2018, all but five of them starts.
Joining Glasgow Warrior Sutherland among Saturday’s replacements at London’s Twickenham Stadium are Ewan Ashman, Will Hurd, Sam Skinner, Gregor Brown, Matt Fagerson, Jamie Dobie and Stafford McDowall.
Kyle Rowe takes over the No 14 jersey from Graham and making up the rest of Saturday’s starting line-up, co-captained by Russell and ex-Southern Knight Rory Darge, are Blair Kinghorn, Huw Jones, Tom Jordan, Duhan van der Merwe, Ben White, Pierre Schoeman, Dave Cherry, Zander Fagerson, Jonny Gray, Grant Gilchrist, Jamie Ritchie and Jack Dempsey.
Scotland go into Saturday’s Calcutta Cup game, kicking off at 4.45pm, sitting fourth in the championship table on five points, with the English third on six after a 26-25 victory at home to France on Saturday, February 8, and they’re targeting a record fifth win against their neighbours on the bounce.
The Scots’ latest loss to the Irish, their 11th in a row, and England’s 26-25 win against France the day before saw them swap places in rugby’s world rankings, Townsend’s team falling one place to seventh and opposite number Steve Borthwick’s side going up one to sixth.
Looking ahead to his eighth Calcutta Cup game since taking over as Scottish head coach eight years ago, Townsend added: “It means a huge amount. It’s the fixture that our supporters, our nation, look forward to more than any other and it’s the mid-game of this Six Nations, a game we have to respond in, in terms of looking to get a win, because we lost our last game.”
He’s won five of his seven games against England, all in the Six Nations, so far – in 2018, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 – as well as drawing 38-all away in 2019 and losing 13-6 at home in 2020.