Scotland Drop Lee, Switch Paterson.

Scotland have dropped Derrick Lee and
switched captain Chris Paterson from fly-half to full-back for their RBS Six Nations championship match against Triple Crown chasing Ireland, at Lansdowne Road on Saturday.

Dan Parks, who took over from Paterson in last Sunday’s 31-0
defeat by
France at Murrayfield when Paterson moved to full-back after Lee was
pulled
off after a dreadful match, keeps the fly-half position.

Otherwise the side is unchanged although there is a fitness doubt
over
flanker Cameron Mather who has been bracketed in alongside Allister
Hogg.

Scotland, who have lost all four of their games so far in this
season’s Six
Nations will be ‘whitewashed’ if they lose to an Ireland team for
whom victory
would secure the Triple Crown and possibly the Championship itself.

Their defeat against France was the first time since 1978 that
Scotland had
failed to score in a Six Nations game and coach Matt Williams, in his
first
season in charge, admitted his largely youthful side were short on
self-belief.
“I feel sorry for the players because they have been very
dedicated and
I’ve kept saying to them the win will come but it will take
time,” explained
the Australian who previously coached the Irish sideLeinster.

“We’ve lost our last four games so, in terms of confidence,
obviously we’re
not bubbling,” added Williams who succeeded Ian McGeechan
following the
legendary Scottish coach’s promotion to director of rugby after
guiding the
team to the World Cup quarter-finals.

“We’ve been working very hard, but the sad thing is we’re
falling below the
standards we expected.”

Scotland:
Chris Paterson capt (Edinburgh); Simon Danielli (Bath/ENG), Tom
Philip
(Edinburgh), Andrew Henderson (Glasgow), Simon Webster (Edinburgh);
Dan Parks
(Glasgow), Chris Cusiter (Borders); Simon Taylor (Edinburgh), Cameron
Mather
(Glasgow) or Allister Hogg (Edinburgh), Jason White (Sale);
Stuart Grimes
(Newcastle), Scott Murray (Edinburgh); Bruce Douglas (Borders),
Gordon
Bulloch (Glasgow), Allan Jacobsen (Edinburgh).
Replacements: Rob Russell (Saracens), Gavin Kerr (Leeds),
Nathan
Hines (Edinburgh), Allister Hogg (Edinburgh) or Jon Petrie (Glasgow),
Mike
Blair (Edinburgh), Brendan Laney (Edinburgh), Derrick Lee (Edinburgh).

AFP – 2004.