Rugby Union: Townsend is ready to make his moves: Bill Leith on the Gala stand-off who has suddenly become the centre of attraction for today's Scottish trial at Murrayfield

GREGOR TOWNSEND, the 19-year-old in only his second season of senior rugby who plays in today's Scottish trial at Murrayfield, has already been attracting comparisions with some of the game's greatest names.

Hailed as 'the next Jonathan Davies' by John Rutherford, the former Scotland stand-off, Townsend has more recently been compared to Jock Turner, capped 20 times from the same Gala club.

As if such billing was not hard enough to justify, Townsend today lines up in the senior Blues side at outside centre, a position he has yet to occupy for Gala.

Having represented Scotland at schools, under-21 and B level as a stand-off, Townsend has been asked to make the transition in the hope that he and Craig Chalmers can figure side by side in the forthcoming Five Nations' Championship.

'It is a logical step,' Peter Dods, Gala's coach, said. 'Craig Chalmers is going to be around for some time, which is not to say that Gregor won't eventually displace him.'

There is a close bond between Dods and Townsend, who took particular satisfaction from a man of the match award from the last midweek outing of Scotland's summer tour of Australia. Immediately, the gift was passed on to Dods, who had just played his final match - against Queensland Country in Toowoomba - before retiring.

The respect is mutual, with Dods noting: 'Gregor's principal asset is pace. He has acceleration off the mark the likes of which I have never seen before. I really hope Gregor passes the trial test and is picked against Ireland on 16 January, but just so long as Scott Hastings is the other centre to provide a steadying influence.

'Gregor isn't yet comfortable as a decision-maker but other than that he is brilliant, particularly after improving his kicking beyond recognition during the Australian tour. He is the sort of player who will readily accept advice, but equally he is one of those geniuses who sometimes just has to be left alone to express himself.'

When Townsend first appeared on the senior stage it was amidst a flurry of spectacular errors, often caused by attempting the outrageous or else taking his eye off the ball as he contemplated a gap.

'Not surprising,' Johnny Brown, a former Gala coach now in charge of the South of Scotland district team, said. 'Gregor's problem was that he insisted on staying too long at under-18 level. When it gets to the stage that you virtually win the colts league for your club single-handed, as Gregor did two years ago, some bad habits develop. He should have stepped up to the seniors when he was 17.'

Brown played alongside the aforementioned Turner, who died suddenly last year, and he recalled: 'Turner was the best player I ever saw. If anything, Gregor has more subtlety.'

Townsend, meanwhile, is nonplussed by the switch of roles from stand-off to centre. 'Centre is different and takes a bit of getting used to in terms of angles of attack and defence,' he said.

'At outside centre there is more space and I have to think harder about taking opponents on the outside. But what I really appreciate about my current opportunity is having someone as solid as Scott Hastings alongside. He just never misses a tackle.'

The amazing thing about Townsend, whose father, Peter, played twice at centre for the South of Scotland in spite of being around at the same time as Gala's international combination of Turner and John Frame, is the way he disregards the hyperbole.

Indeed, there is something of the little boy lost about the budding superstar going by appearances during this week's Scotland A trip to Dublin.

A student of politics and history at Edinburgh University, Townsend at one stage of the journey folded his copy of The Economist into a pocket, took a lick of his ice-lolly and then passed judgement on his rugby career so far. 'All I've done this season is cut down on my mistakes.

'It's time I did something to justify all this praise and all these predictions in the newspapers.' That time has almost arrived.

(Photograph omitted)