In a well-ordered universe, the sun comes up in the east, tides rise and fall, and Jonny Gray tops the Scotland tackle count. Which is why some of us wondered if some major cosmological event had taken place on the eve of Scotland’s Guinness Six Nations game against Ireland nine days ago. When the match statistics emerged in its aftermath, the 24-year-old lock was not even in the top three.
Gray was not all that far behind Josh Strauss (29 tackles), Grant Gilchrist (28) and Allan Dell (25), and his success rate in contact was an impressive 96 per cent. Yet there was still a suspicion that the man who has been a machine-like presence in the Scotland second row for the past five years