- The Edinburgh winger suffered an injury during Saturday’s win over Fiji
- Graham failed to assess for a head injury after the match
- The Scots welcome the reigning world champions to Murrayfield on Sunday
Darcy Graham has been ruled out of Sunday’s match between Scotland and world champions South Africa at Murrayfield.
The Edinburgh winger was injured while scoring his fourth try against Fiji last Saturday, a moment that briefly left him level with Duhan van der Merwe at the top of the all-time charts.
Graham, making his first international appearance since last year’s World Cup, failed a head injury assessment (HIA) after the match – and subsequent tests showed he will not be able to feature against the Springboks.
Head coach Gregor Townsend said: ‘Darcy unfortunately failed his HIA2 and his HIA3, so he has been ruled out for this weekend. It’s a twelve-day period, so he doesn’t do anything for the next three days and then he begins the gradual return to play.
‘If all goes well, he will be available for Portugal (on November 16).
‘It’s not good news. But it’s probably better that we know now than if it were closer to the game. But he is disappointed because he has no symptoms.
Winger Darcy Graham has been ruled out of this weekend’s match against South Africa
The Edinburgh man scored four tries against the Fijians as Scotland ran riot at Murrayfield
Gregor Townsend hopes to secure a second victory in the Autumn Internationals Series
‘He feels good, but you have to pass the assessment and he was very close to that. So he will feel frustrated, but those are the rules and it is very important that we stick to them.’
Townsend revealed it was Graham himself who flagged the injury after landing for his fourth score.
“I’m sure it was accidental, just as he was going over.” His head got grabbed and at that point it obviously didn’t look serious. (He) reported it to our medics, which is great. We should applaud that from our players.
‘About five minutes later he said he had a headache. So that’s a really positive thing because I’m sure he would be desperate to stay on the field because he’s played so well and scored so many tries up to that point. Now it is important that he recovers.’
Kyle Rowe was ruled out against Fiji with a hamstring problem, but was able to play this weekend
Kyle Rowe, who suffered a hamstring injury in the match, could still play on Sunday.
Townsend added: “Kyle Rowe is much better than expected. We’re not ruling him out this week, which obviously means we’re not ruling him out for the tournament either, which is good news.
‘We all had the feeling that he might miss the next few games, but he is recovering well and the scan yielded positive news.
‘Now it will be a matter of seeing how he responds in training and how much we think we can push him, because we need some contribution in training this week to be able to participate in the game.
“The fact that it’s a day later, it’s an eight-day turnaround, I’m optimistic about that, but it will be dealt with in the next few days.”