- The new GROGS season got off to a flying start with a near record crowd for September enjoying a most interesting talk from Gavin Vaughan, the Lead National Team Performance Analyst for the Scottish rugby squad. Not one of the high profile members of the SRU team, Gavin's role was described by Chairman Fergus Neil in his introduction as being increasingly crucial to the modern rugby game. Gavin is Welsh through and through but we still understood and appreciated everything he said! He recounted his early years in rugby playing for his local mining village club before being invalided out of the sport at an young age with knee injuries. Wales' playing loss became Scotland's technological gain! He started as a performance analyst which he described as basically being a man behind a camera on a tripod filming local matches. It was all very basic stuff but someone recognised the importance of technology for the future and he was offered a job with Ospreys Rugby. Gavin feels that his work is an ongoing learning curve, learning from others as well as his own evolving experience. He moved for a period to Italy before coming to Glasgow, teaming up with Gregor Townsend at Warriors. He talked about the training methods with the Warriors and how they progressed the skill techniques. For example, missed tackles for each player were counted in each game and then concentrated on during the ensuing training. In 2014, he told us, Jonnie Gray had a run of 216 consecutive tackles in a row! Heady stuff! It was interesting to hear how Gregor Townsend dipped into the innovative element of the Scottish DNA when building the successful team and how he was inspired to ask Sir Alex Ferguson to talk to the squad providing such mantras as “complacency is a disease” and “play the occasion not the game”! It’s not all fun for Gavin. One weekend he had to watch 18 televised games, all for analytical purposes. This industry led to discovering such talents as Huw Jones, Niko Matawalu and Leone Nakawara. Since joining the Scotland set-up with Gregor in 2017 he has experienced high points and low points but believes the Scotland squad, with 800 collective caps experience, is at its strongest for the last 20 years and will be in a good position for the 2027 World Cup. Gavin commented on other things and answered some pertinent questions very knowledgeably. All in all, a very interesting talk and very deserving of the bottle of GROGS Special Whisky presented to him at the end.