Six Nations: Richie Gray relaxed over Scotland's choice of captain for Wales clash

Gray’s younger brother and second-row partner Jonny is one of the two leading candidates, along with back-row forward John Barclay. Henry Pyrgos, who is joint captain of Glasgow along with Jonny Gray, could also come into consideration, although he faces a fight with Warriors team-mate Ali Price to take over from Laidlaw as the starting scrum-half. Similarly, Ross Ford has been skipper before, but he may be overlooked as starting hooker in favour of Fraser Brown.

Richie Gray believes the fact that there are several candidates is an indication of the strength of leadership within the group, and is confident that, whoever is announced along with the team tomorrow, the collective leadership will remain a vital element against the Welsh. “Obviously teams need a captain and need to be led well, but let’s not get too bogged down with it,” the Toulouse lock said yesterday. “We have a good leadership group and whoever is captain will step up and take it on from there.

“We’re not going to win or lose the game by who we name as captain. We’ll win by how we play the game.”

After Laidlaw sustained the injury in the first half of the game against France that has ruled him out of the rest of the tournament, Barclay took over as captain but was then injured himself.

He did nothing during the brief time he was in charge to suggest he should not be given the honour again, and so should probably be seen as favourite ahead of Jonny Gray, who succeeded him when he in turn had to leave the field.

Five years older than Jonny, Richie may not have been accustomed when growing up to seeing his younger brother as an authority figure, but said: “It was Jonny’s first time as captain but it wasn’t strange for me at all.

“These days there are a lot of leadership groups. There are a lot of co-captains, so it’s not solely a one-man leadership. It’s up to a host of players to show leadership.

“It’s unfortunate we’ve lost Greig. He gives us great leadership and bosses us around the park well, so there’s no denying he’s a huge loss. But we have boys in the team who are defence leaders and attack leaders and these guys can step up. “Jonny and Henry are doing a great job at Glasgow. Jonny calls our line-outs with Scotland and he’s moving up into that captaincy role. He’s a reserved guy – reserved in training and on the pitch as well. He’s not running around shouting; he says what needs to be said.”

While the 22-16 defeat by France was an exhausting battle, one which led to Josh Strauss as well as Laidlaw being sidelined for the rest of the championship because of injury, the Scotland squad were by no means mired in gloom as a result of the loss. Their belief that they could and should have played much better – and that had they done so they might have won – is being used as a positive motivation for the Wales game.

“The positive to take from the France game was that we didn’t play anywhere near as we could have done,” Gray added. “All of the boys were very frustrated the day after the game. We weren’t able to get into our flow or the way we wanted to play.

“You have to give credit to France for stopping us from doing that, but it was very frustrating. It was our own errors which cost us and we can play a lot better than that. We need to rectify that this weekend.

“I don’t know if it was the most physical game I’ve played, but it’s certainly up there. It’s always a different game when you play France – it’s very attritional. It’s about big contacts in the scrum and the maul and it does take its toll on you.”

Having beaten Ireland in their opening match, Scotland go into the Wales match with their campaign finely poised. It’s a huge game, obviously,” Gray said. “It’s the middle of the championship, the teams seem evenly balanced and a lot could swing this weekend.

“If we were to pick up a win we’d pick up a huge amount of momentum and confidence. We’d go into the last two games with a decent shout at a strong finish.”