It has been an up-and-down start to the Greene King IPA Championship season for London Scottish but scrum-half Russell Weir is loving every minute.
After three years with Scotland on the International Sevens Series, the former Loughborough Students captain joined the Exiles this summer.
Peter Richards’ side followed an opening-day defeat at home to Moseley with four wins on the bounce, including a 30-27 triumph away to league leaders Yorkshire Carnegie.
That run came to an end on Sunday, when they left Cornish Pirates with a solitary losing bonus point, but Weir insists the omens are good at Scottish.
“I have loved being involved,” he said.
“I loved my time with the sevens, travelling around and seeing some pretty cool places, but it’s great to get back into XVs.
“If nothing else, it’s about getting back into the club atmosphere, playing every weekend and a training week with the focal point of playing at the weekend.
“A lot of the guys were saying during pre-season that it was shaping up that way – it really is a league where anyone can beat anyone and no team probably shows that more than ourselves.
“A lot of it is on the given day and who gets a good start to the game. We gave ourselves quite a lot to do against Pirates – at one point we were about 15 points astray.
“Going to Yorkshire away, I don’t know if it’s the underdog mentality, whereas maybe when you go away to Pirates you are a bit more trying not to lose rather than trying to turn them over.
“It’s a little bit of that but really it’s just about little things going wrong and making some errors that are quite uncharacteristic.”
The quest to get back to winning ways begins on Friday night, when the Exiles host a Nottingham side coming off the back of an impressive 30-10 victory over London Welsh.
That was just their second win of the season but Nottingham have not had much trouble finding the try line in that time and Weir is wary.
He added: “We go into all these games knowing we are capable of scoring points. We have got exciting prospects in the backline and right across the field.
“We have done quite a bit of analysis on Nottingham and in four out of six games they have played, they have scored 30-plus points.
“We always go into games really trying to focus on making sure our defence is as tight as possible. It’s always about trying to keep them as quiet as possible and playing in the right areas of the pitch.
“They haven’t had a brilliant start but they have been on the wrong end of some really tight games. There is absolutely no taking them lightly and, coming off the back of losing to Pirates, we are looking for a bit of a reaction.”
The 2015/16 Greene King IPA Championship kicked off on September 5th. To stay up-to-date with all the latest action from across the league, follow @Champrugby on Twitter
Feature image of Russell Weir courtesy of London Scottish, via Youtube, with thanks
