I lament the Scotland squad absentees - and wonder about heir to Finn Russell's throne

It is sad to think that the absence of back-rower Hamish Watson suggests that his day as a Scotland player may be over. If so, he will be missed, for his international career has been outstanding. Perhaps he isn't quite what he was and has lost a bit of pace, but he has still shone in a substitute role for Edinburgh. I had hoped that his clubmate Magnus Bradbury had done enough since his return to Edinburgh, but not so.

Head coach Gregor Townsend has spoken - unusually harshly - of Jonny Gray's decision to stay with his new club Bordeaux, but given that he has only just returned from a long injury break lasting the whole of last season, it seems understandable. I hope this absence won't be held against him when it comes to the Six Nations.

There are good up and coming locks to challenge Grant Gilchrist and Scott Cummings, but for Six Nations matches there is still no substitute for experience, and Jonny Gray has that.

The size of the squad not only gives players like the younger Tuipulotu, Mosese, and the 19-year-old Freddy Douglas, a star in an often struggling under-20 side last season, a taste for the big time - it also reflects the unusual programme this autumn.

Players from English and French clubs won't be available for the first match, which is against Fiji next Saturday. That rules out the likes of Finn Russell, Ben White and Blair Kinghorn. Then comes South Africa, when one assumes Townsend will field his strongest possible side, for there is not point playing the reigning world champions if you don't give yourself the best possible chance to beat them.

Russell and Kinghorn are surely automatic choices, while White has been the favoured scrum-half recently. That said, competition at No 9 is as fierce as it has ever been with George Horne and young Jamie Dobie shining for Glasgow, and Ali Price, now at Edinburgh, recently playing his best rugby for a couple of years. It's hard to say what the pecking order at scrum-half is now.

Matches against Portugal and Australia follow the South African game, and this makes subsequent selection very interesting. No doubt it will depend on the outcome of the earlier matches, for the Fiji one is likely to be close. Still, whatever the result against the Springboks - who, even at Murrayfield, must be favourites - we must surely beat Australia, and this must influence selection for the Portugal game.

Portugal are a skilful and rapidly developing side, resembling Uruguay who gave us a hard match in the summer. The Portuguese are not to be taken lightly, and yet, depending in part on previous results, it would seem that the Scotland XV will contain a good number of players on the fringe of what might be recognised as our strongest team. 

The fly-half position is interesting, and not only because Russell will not be available for the Fiji game and will surely sit out the one against Portugal. He is now 32 and, though one trusts he will still last to the next World Cup, he is approaching the evening of his career. It is natural to speculate about his successor.

In this respect the autumn squad selection is interesting, with Glasgow's Tom Jordan and Adam Hastings preferred to Edinburgh's Ross Thompson and Ben Healy. Thompson played well in Edinburgh's wins against the Stormers and Cardiff, but he is a 10 who doesn't attack the line as Hastings and Jordan do.

Jordan, a New Zealander, only now qualified on residence, has been in terrific form for Glasgow, and may well have nudged himself ahead of Hastings, who is still perhaps a little short of his best after injuries, operations and prolonged recuperation.

For some time I thought of Jordan as more a 12 than a 10, but he is proving me wrong and is certainly a man in form. He is powerful, fast, with an eye for space, and a fine boot on him. In the past he has too often lacked self-control and consequently spent too much time in the sin-bin, but this season he seems to have been more careful, without dimming his attacking spirit.

There is also, unusually, a Scotland A match - against Chile - which will give an opportunity to youngsters like Harry Patterson and Freddy Douglas, as well as players like Ben Muncaster, Max Williamson and Gregor Brown, as well as Mosese Tuipulotu, the new captain's young brother - though I daresay Gregor will have him on from the bench in a full international, just to make sure he is securely tied to Scotland.

On a completely different tact, it is very disappointing that Glasgow having saved and agreed to provide a home for the Commonwealth Games, there is no place for Rugby Sevens in the country where the short form of rugby was first devised and where it has flourished for not far short of 150 years ago.