Scotland take the high road for Rugby World Cup 2015 preparations

The Scotland national team will kick-start its preparations for the Rugby World Cup 2015 at a high-altitude training facility in the French Pyrenees.The players will gather at BT Murrayfield on Monday 15 June, for three days, before traveling to the no-frills venue in Font Romeu, made famous by world-record holding marathon runner and six-time world champion Paula Radcliffe MBE.The squad will then return home the following Thursday (23 June) for two months of skills and conditioning at BT Murrayfield.He said: “The RBS 6 Nations gave us an opportunity to look at our game closely.”There’ll be no pretense from us. We’ll be looking at every aspect of our game – technical, tactical, physical, psychological – holistically what we want to achieve and where we want to go as a group.There will be different stages to our preparation and this [overseas camp] will start us off, get the players away together and away from a comfort zone.”It’s a great training camp. It’s not one of the flashiest places to go to but it’s very functional and I think it’ll be good to kick it off.”I’m looking forward to spending some time together as a group, nut a few things out, run a few scenarios, develop our game management and become better athletes.We’ll go through a number of phases of preparation that will come before the preparation games, which will be important for players to stake claims for the final squad.”Scotland will face France, Ireland and Italy as part of the national team’s build-up to the Rugby World Cup 2015.The four-match schedule played on consecutive Saturdays from mid-August (15th) will begin when Cotter’s men travel to face Ireland at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin.Back-to-back fixtures against Italy will follow in Turin (22nd) and Edinburgh (29th), before concluding preparations against France in Paris at the start of September (5th).Summer Test schedule·      Saturday 15 August: Ireland v Scotland, Aviva Stadium, Dublin·      Saturday 22 August: Italy v Scotland, Olympic Stadium, Turin·      Saturday 29 August: Scotland v Italy, BT Murrayfield, Edinburgh·      Saturday 5 September: France v Scotland, Stade de France, ParisRWC 2015 Pool stages·      Wednesday 23 September: Scotland v Japan, Kingsholm (kick-off 2.30pm)·      Sunday 27 September: Scotland v USA, Elland Road (kick-off 2.30pm)·      Saturday 3 October: South Africa v Scotland, St James Park (kick-off 4.45pm)·      Saturday 10 October: Samoa v Scotland, St James Park (kick-off 2.30pm)Scheduling of knock out rounds determined by performance in the Pool stages