Gregor Townsend expects Finn Russell to return for Scotland in Saturday’s Nations Championship showdown with South Africa in Pretoria.
The talismanic stand-off sat out last weekend’s campaign-opening victory over Argentina after missing the last three games of Bath’s season with a calf injury.
But Townsend reported that Russell is progressing well and on course to face the world champions at Loftus Versfeld.
“Yeah, he should be,” said the head coach, speaking on Tuesday from his team’s base in South Africa. “He trained fine today and he trained well at the end of the week.
“Wednesday’s session he trained fully with the team, he did his own thing on Friday and then the guys who weren’t involved did a session on Saturday after the team run and he’s trained fine today.
“I think he’s definitely over the calf injury. He may have been fit at the weekend. We just felt that he needed more training to really be available for the tough Test matches ahead of us, especially this one this weekend.”
Northampton prop Elliot Millar Mills has left the Scotland camp and will play no part in the remaining games this summer against the Springboks and Fiji after sustaining a calf injury early in Saturday’s 47-38 win over the Pumas.
“It’s obviously a real blow for Elliot, getting to start for Scotland in such a big game and building on the form that he’s been showing with his club and with us over the last season,” said Townsend.
“I think the blow too is that he’s really match fit. He’s been playing games for Northampton all the way to the (Prem Rugby) final.
“The only position that we came with more depth was tighthead prop, so we were lucky in a way that we brought four tightheads out here because D’Arcy Rae was coming back from injury and he’d been out with the Baa-Baas.
“Will Hurd played a semi-final for Leicester, so it means that there’s no changes to our group. Will, Darcy and Zander (Fagerson) are training fully, so while it’s a blow for Elliot, we don’t have to bring anybody else in.”
Scotland have risen to fifth in the world rankings after a run of four victories in their last five matches, but Townsend knows his side face the ultimate test this weekend.
“From our perspective, no-one in our group has played South Africa for Scotland away from home,” he said.
“It’s a unique opportunity for us, obviously the biggest challenge in world rugby. It’ll be a great marker of where we are and where we need to go following this game.”