Blow for Scotland boss Gregor Townsend as Darcy Graham is ruled out of weekend Springboks clash

Darcy Graham has been ruled out of Scotland’s clash with world champions South Africa at Murrayfield on Sunday.

The Edinburgh winger was injured in the process of scoring his fourth try against Fiji last Saturday, a moment that took him briefly level with Duhan van der Merwe at the top of the all-time scoring charts.

Graham, who was making his first international appearance since last year’s World Cup, failed a head injury assessment (HIA) after the game — and subsequent tests showed he won’t be able to feature against the Springboks.

Head coach Gregor Townsend said: ‘Darcy unfortunately failed his HIA2 and his HIA3 so he’ll be ruled out for this weekend. It’s a 12-day period so he’ll do nothing for the next three days and then he starts the graduated return to play. 

‘If everything goes well, he’ll be available for Portugal (on November 16).

‘It’s not good news. But it’s probably better that we know now than if it was closer to the game. But he’s disappointed as he’s not got any symptoms.

The Edinburgh man scored four tries against the Fijians as Scotland ran riot at Murrayfield

Gregor Townsend is hoping to secure a second Autumn Internationals Series victory

‘He’s feeling good but you have to pass the assessment and he was very close to doing that. So he’ll feel frustrated but those are the regulations and it’s really important we stick by them.’

Townsend revealed it was Graham himself who flagged the injury after touching down for his fourth score.

‘I’m sure it was accidental just as he went over. He got caught in the head and obviously at the time it didn’t look anything serious. (He) flagged it up to our medics, which is great. We’ve got to applaud that from our players. 

‘About five minutes later he said he was feeling a headache. So that’s a real positive because I’m sure he’d be desperate to stay on the field, having played so well and scored so many tries up to that point. Now it’s important he recovers.’

Kyle Rowe was taken off against Fiji with a hamstring problem but could feature this weekend

Kyle Rowe, who sustained a hamstring injury in the match, could yet feature on Sunday.

Townsend added: ‘Kyle Rowe is much better than expected. We’re not ruling him out for this week, and obviously that means we’re not ruling him out for the tournament, which is good news. 

‘We all felt that (he could) miss the next few games but he’s recovering well and the scan provided positive news.

‘It will now be a case of seeing how he responds to training and how much we feel we can push him because we’ll need some contribution in training this week to go into the game. 

‘The fact that it’s a day later, it’s an eight-day turnaround, I’m optimistic, but it’ll be dealt with over the next couple of days.’