Sione Tuipulotu

Sione Tuipulotu qualified for Scotland through a grandmother from Greenock and has since become the player the team is organised around.

Born in Melbourne, he arrived at Glasgow in 2021 with a modest reputation and turned into a Test twelve of genuine quality — a carrier who wins the gain line without being purely a battering ram, and a distributor good enough that Scotland can play off him rather than through him.

The partnership with Huw Jones is the most productive Scottish midfield pairing in the professional era, and it works because Tuipulotu does the unglamorous half: he takes the contact that creates the space Jones runs into.

The captaincy followed, which surprised nobody who had watched him in the twelve months before it.

He has become an unusually well-liked figure in Scottish rugby for a player who arrived from the other side of the world at twenty-four. The reason is straightforward: he plays like he means it.