Great expectations

Should they fail to achieve that they will, by definition, be Scotland’s worst World Cup campaigners.

However, having won five Tests in succession, they are one short of Scotland’s all-time best run of consecutive wins and a record-equalling victory against the Pumas would set them up perfectly for the first playing of the world’s oldest Test match on neutral territory when they meet England the following week.

McLauchlan is hugely excited by what is to come.

“I think if you look at them individually, this whole squad, they’ve all got real talent and real dedication,” he said. “If they play with passion and get rid of the silly mistakes that have cost us tries, you see what they are capable of.

“To me, the winning run they are on is a great thing and everybody’s on about this four day turnaround people have struggled with, but we had a four-day turnaround against Georgia.

“England have had the easy ride and also they’ve had three games in the same stadium which must be an advantage, as is playing indoors. However, I was telling an English journalist I met on the plane that by the time we get you we’ll be outside and you’ll be cold.”

In saying so he reckons that the key thing for Scotland is to trust their methods and not try to force things as they have been doing when chances have presented themselves.

“When you look at the All Blacks and the South Africans they do it, do it, do it, do it and the break comes. The same with England,” he noted.

This is a man who knows what he is talking about. A member of the two greatest British & Irish Lions Test teams, he captained Scotland what was a then record number of times in the 1970s and has brought renewed credibility to the office of SRU president as a well-known figure throughout the sport.

His presence in leading the Scottish delegation’s visit to the devastated Christchurch at the weekend and including a visit to the venue he is enough of a traditionalist to call Lancaster Park, gave the local rugby legends who were there to greet them an instance point of reference.

However, having agreed to take the ambassadorial lead in New Zealand when the previous, less rugby-oriented regime was in charge at Murrayfield, he subsequently insisted that if he was to be involved in selecting the organisation’s new chief executive, that the process be completed before he travelled.

He is delighted with the outcome, following Mark Dodson’s appointment and believes that has contributed to a renewed mood of optimism.

“Scottish rugby is now going very well from my point of view,” said McLauchlan. “There is a definite good feeling within all the people in and around Scottish rugby. I’ve had lots of contact from home, there were wins for Edinburgh and Glasgow at the weekend, which is a great thing, and then you’ve got a new chief executive who started on Monday. I think you’ll find him a real breath of fresh air.

“He’s very easy to talk to and he can’t wait to get into the roadshows to start telling people what he wants. I insisted that he come out here to the CEOs conference where I can introduce him to all the people he needs to know and he’s a rugby guy.

“He’s nuts about rugby. He tried to buy Sale Sharks. He said: ‘Give me the toughest KPIs [key performance indicators] you want and if I accept them I’ll fulfil them because I’ll do what I have to to get them.’ He knows what’s achievable.”

The latest evidence of how things are changing is the SRU’s decision to apply to move Glasgow Warriors and the World Sevens Series tournament to Scotstoun Stadium.

An Ayrshireman by birth who captained Glasgow District, McLauchlan now lives within two minutes drive of Murrayfield, but shows his true colours when pointing out how the only concern jokingly raised to that plan by an International Rugby Board delegate was dismissed by Glasgow City Council officials.

“The girl said: ‘The thing about Edinburgh is you can go shopping in Debenhams.’ She was told: ‘The originals shops are all in the Merchant City.’ What they can’t sell in Glasgow they pump through to Edinburgh,” McLauchlan recounted through a typically malicious chuckle. You can take the boy out of the west coast . . .

That wicked sense of humour has also been tickled by the sort of conspiracy theorising he remembers as being typical of the rugby obsessed country he is visiting for the umpteenth time.

“It’s been a good tournament,” he said. “I think there will be other upsets and, of course, the All Blacks are now saying the French will throw the game against them so they don’t have to play against South Africa.”

The trouble is that following Ireland’s defeat of Australia there is genuine reason to believe that the runners-up in the New Zealand/ France pool might have an easier route through the draw than the winners.

Similarly there is a case that if France should beat New Zealand then. given the record of never having beaten the All Blacks, it might be in Scotland’s interests to lose to England the following week.

That is not to be countenanced by the president.

“You just take who comes,” was his emphatic response. “All we have to do right at this moment is beat Argentina and we’re still capable of beating England.”

To that end, he believes Scotland’s players should draw enormous confidence from the run they are on, regardless of what people think of the quality of the opposition.

“You win as many games as you can because confidence is in winning and what I was saying to the boys the other day is that we have to remind ourselves that a lot of these teams like Georgia don’t think they can beat England but they think they can beat us,” he observed.

“Romania don’t think they can beat England but they think they can beat us. So games for us are harder and they try a lot harder and they go at it in a different way.”

Nor does this vastly experienced man, who is among the few Scots to have experienced a Test win over the All Blacks, doing so with the Lions in 1971, think it completely impossible to overcome the hosts

“I would say you would get very long odds on it,” he said of that prospect with another wicked laugh. “However, they only have to have a bad shift and our guys are getting better and better and more confident. If you look at them, they [Scotland] are pretty much together as a team.”

By contrast, he feels there is unease in New Zealand that can be capitalised upon. “If the All Blacks lose once then the Bunsen burner’s right below them,” this wily campaigner noted. “You’ve experienced this place more than once. They are absolutely unrelenting. I spoke to some of the former All Blacks at the opening ceremony and they were saying that the only guy in New Zealand who doesn’t know their first XV is Graham Henry. He keeps tinkering about and they absolutely hate that. They want the same guys, or at least 12 out of the 15 to be constant.”

He may be right, as he has so often been about all sorts of aspects of rugby down the years. Either way, though, the man they call Mighty Mouse is helping to put a smile back on the face of Scottish rugby, accompanied, of course, by a devilish glint in the eye.