Megan Hyland will captain Scotland women’s rugby under-21s for a second time when they take on France away in Tarbes on Saturday afternoon.
The clash at the Stade Maurice Trelut (2pm UK time, live on YouTube) is match two of three for the young Scots in the age-grade Six Nations Series.
After an opening 51-12 defeat to England at Hive Stadium on April 18 in round one, it promises to be another testing fixture for them as France thumped Wales 76-5 in Cardiff that same day.
Hyland’s rugby journey began when she was young when a taster session at her primary school left her hooked.
Originally from Stonehaven, she played from primary two to primary seven at the Mackie club and then she had spells with Montrose and Dundee and, in her senior career to date, she has played for Garioch, Heriot’s and Glasgow Warriors.
The 20-year-old hooker will be leading her charges into battle versus France with the starting team showing eight changes from the England game.
Hannah Smyth, Emily Norval, Lisa Brown, Millie Warren, Imogen Spence, Lucy Finch, Gemma Bell and Merryn Gunderson have all come in while Aicha Sutcliffe, who came through the ranks with Huntly and Strathallan School and has recently been training with the full Scotland squad, has been added to the bench.
“I’m expecting a phenomenal atmosphere first of all,” Scotland under-21 head coach Louise Dalgliesh said about the France match.
“We’ve seen the result that they had against Wales and France have got a lot of extremely physical players and some really good quality ball players.
“They definitely are the epitome of a multi-threat team in terms of how they play and what they might look to do.
“We could spend time trying to contain them and try to match the way they play or we could focus on the areas that we are going to go after and really judge our success on that.
“It is so different that you can’t prepare players for that experience of playing away in France because the crowd will be a lot bigger than a lot of our squad have played in front of before, but we are excited about this challenge.”
- In the other round two games on Saturday in the Six Nations Series, Italy are taking on Wales (1.30pm UK time) with England facing Ireland (3pm UK time).
Scotland under-21 are pictured in action versus England – thanks to Scottish Rugby
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