Glasgow centre Stafford McDowall is set for his second Scotland appearance after being selected to start Saturday’s Guinness Six Nations match away to title-chasing Ireland.

The 26-year-old made his debut against Italy in a World Cup warm-up match last summer before being cut from Gregor Townsend’s squad for the tournament in France.

The recent injury sustained by regular starter Sione Tuipulotu paved the way for Cam Redpath to make a rare start in last weekend’s damaging 31-29 defeat away to the Azzurri.

However, McDowall, who has been in good form for Warriors this term, has been preferred to Redpath, who drops to the bench in one of two changes to the team that started in Rome.

The other alteration sees first-choice scrum-half Ben White return in place of George Horne after the Toulon number nine was rested for the match at the Stadio Olimpico.

Backs Horne and Redpath both drop to the bench, with head coach Gregor Townsend reverting to a 5/3 split after going with a 6/2 last weekend.

Veteran prop Rory Sutherland, a late call-up to the squad ahead of the Italy game, is in line for his first outing of the championship after being named among the subs.

Fellow loosehead Alec Hepburn drops out of the 23 along with former captain Jamie Ritchie.

Sione Tuipulotu was despondent as he faced up to the realisation that he and his Scotland team-mates are flying home after suffering pool-stage elimination from the World Cup.

The Scots arrived in France at the start of September with high expectations after climbing to fifth in the world on the back of a string of impressive results and performances.

However, they were ultimately unable to overcome the challenge of being grouped alongside defending champions South Africa and the world’s top-ranked side, Ireland, in a top-heavy Pool B.

After bouncing back from their 18-3 defeat to the Boks with heavy wins over Tonga and Romania, the Scots’ bid to reach the quarter-final was killed off by a 36-14 blitzing from the rampant Irish in Paris on Saturday night.

“I’m very disappointed,” said centre Tuipulotu. “We’re out of the tournament now and it feels like all our hard work and stuff like that has come to an end.

“I know there’s more rugby to be played after this World Cup but you’re in a World Cup to win it and now we’re out of it. I’m really gutted. We had a big travelling support, so apologies to them.

“We wanted to do better in the tournament but we ran into two pretty good teams in our pool and ultimately just got beaten by better teams.”

As he tried to process the disappointment of his first World Cup coming to an end, Tuipuloto, 26, admitted it was difficult to think about the future.

“I’m very upset and I don’t really know how to deal with it,” he said. “We’ve got a good team with good blokes in our changing room. But it’s just frustrating to be saying the same type of messages after tournaments like these.

“I suppose there’s another tournament and another tournament after that and maybe the right thing to say now is ‘we’ll be better in the next tournament’ but right now I’m just feeling gutted.”

Rory Darge admitted Ireland – who scored after 63 seconds and were 26-0 up at half-time – showed Scotland why they are the top-ranked side on the planet at Stade de France.

The Irish stopped the Scots getting any reward for the sustained pressure they exerted in the first quarter of the match and then took most of the chances that came their way at the other end.

“They are the number one team in the world and they showed it,” said flanker Darge. “We could have been better in a lot of things, taken our chances when we had a lot of ball in their 22 at the start of the game.

“Once they get in behind with some of those carries, they are very, very good. They withheld a lot of what we threw at them in that first 20.

“Obviously the scoreline is what it is and that’s off the back of them being brutally clinical and we weren’t.”

Sione Tuipulotu was overcome with emotion as he revealed his mother’s trip across the world to watch him play for Scotland for the first time will give him all the motivation he needs for Sunday’s World Cup showdown with South Africa.

The Australia-born centre is qualified to represent the Scots through his grandmother, Jacqueline, from Greenock and he has become one of Gregor Townsend’s main men since making his debut in autumn 2021, shortly after he joined Glasgow.

While Tuipulotu’s Tongan father Fohe has been over to watch him play for Scotland, his mother Angelina – who is from south-east Melbourne after her Scottish and Italian parents moved there – has not been able to attend any of his matches in person since he left Melbourne Rebels in 2019.

The 26-year-old apologised to journalists as he welled up with tears and briefly paused to compose himself while outlining the journey his mother had undertaken to get herself to France to see her son play on the biggest stage in rugby.

“My mum got here yesterday and it will be the first time she’ll have watched me play rugby for quite a while,” said Tuipoluto, speaking at the team’s base in the south of France on Thursday. “I had a chat with her yesterday when she got to Paris.

“It was quite an emotional phone call, she just said how proud she was. Obviously it’s her mum that is part of my Scottish heritage and she said she is really proud when she sees me during the anthem and hears the background in terms of Murrayfield, the noise and stuff like that (while watching on television).

“I can’t really imagine how she is going to feel this weekend with the noise in Marseille when I’m playing the world champions. That is part of my motivation this week, I don’t need any extra motivation because my mum is over and she hasn’t seen me play for a while.

“She travelled all the way from Australia. She explained the route to me and she had quite a hard time with admin. She is terrible with admin just like me and she made a few mistakes along the way but she’s here, she made it.”

Asked if it was thinking about the length of journey his mother had undertaken from Australia that caused him to choke back the tears, Tuipulotu said: “Not just that journey but her journey in general.

“Everyone has their rugby journey in terms of where they’ve come from. When it’s your own mum, only you know what she has been through to get you to this point. Her story is something I have always thought about as a motivation for me in my rugby and I suppose it’s all just climaxed towards this weekend.

“She last watched me when I was in Melbourne playing for the Rebels. She was always there every game, the same as my dad who has been over to Scotland to watch me play a couple of times which has been cool. But this one is a little bit more special just because it is my mum and I am very emotional about it.”

Since joining Glasgow from Japanese club Yamaha Jubilo in 2021, Tuipulotu has become a first-choice pick for Scotland and one of the most highly-regarded centres in the world.

“I would be lying if I said to you I didn’t think it was going to be achievable because I have always backed myself through my whole career,” he said of his impressive rise to prominence.

“I have always been a confident player and when I moved over to Scotland, I had the goal that if I was going to move that far away from my family, I was going to make it happen.

“You need some things to go your way in order to make it happen and I got lucky with the coaches I had as soon as I came over here, but it’s also about my hard work as soon as I came over to try to keep improving as a player.

“It has been an awesome journey over the past couple of years and I am super-excited for the tournament to kick off. As a kid I wanted to be one of the best players in my position in the world and this is the tournament you get to prove that.”