BEN WHITE

After a traumatic year, the Scotland No 9 is targeting success in France

- Tom English

WE COULD begin by talking about how he’s surged past the opposition to become Scotland’s first-choice scrum-half or discuss how the World Cup is getting his juices flowing. But given the “trauma” of what he went through with London Irish, it’s only right to begin a chat with Ben White with a look back on what’s been going on in his world this past while.

He’s speaking from Scotland’s training camp in Edinburgh; happy and focused on what lies ahead but also hardened by what he has left behind. The demise of London Irish has left a mark, not just the collapse but particularly the way the collapse was handled.

“Yeah, I’d call it a traumatic time,” he says about an episode that caused massive upheaval for so many people. “The murmurs around the Six Nations were that the club was looking for new ownership and that they had people in the pipeline. The Americans were going to take it over and everything was going to be okay. That was the message.

“Then it dragged on and dragged on and nothing happened. It was looking more desperate but we were all told that a deal was going through. Were we lied to?”

White was only at London Irish for a short time – he was brought up in the Leicester system – but he could see people around him who had been there for decades.