It rained in Spain yesterday, but too late to effect Scotland's training time.

It rained in Spain yesterday, but too late to effect Scotland's training time. Instead, with return flights staggered because of the numbers travelling, Ally Hogg, HugoSouthwell and the physio Dan Moore - three of the rump of four left behind and scheduled to return today after the majority headed home yesterday - were bound for the La Manga golf course to do battle with the elements, as well as one another.

For Hogg and Southwell there was credibility to be regained after they let down Edinburgh, losing to Dan Parks and Frank Hadden (thenational coach studied in Glasgow) in this week's inter-city match which ended in an honourable draw.

Mike Blair and Moore, meanwhile, claimed the substantial scalp of Thom Evans and his brother Max, a former pro. "They played them scratch and beat them," Hogg noted, before adding with a laugh, "Mike says the Evans brothers bottled it."

Yet it was far from a holiday camp earlier in the week as the squad got down to work with a new management regime in the warm weather.

While Hadden remains in overall charge, it was inevitable, and indeed vital, that Mike Brewer, as forwards coach, and Graeme Steadman, defence coach, would have different ideas.

While he admitted that it is too soon to draw too many conclusions about howeffective it is all going to be, Hogg, the former Edinburgh captain who is now a senior figure within the squad, felt it had been an extremely useful exercise.

"It has gone well. The first three days before the exiles went home, we got a lot of work done with a couple of new patterns of play," he said. "There's a few new lineouts and a few new plays. The pitches out here are superb, in really good condition, so we were able to do a lot of useful top of the ground work."

The Edinburgh players had already had a fair bit of exposure to Steadman, who is helping them with their defence. "There are always things to get used to with different people, even when it comes down to the terminology they use, so the Edinburgh boys had a head start on that with Graeme, but people have got used to it quickly," said Hogg.

The approach of Brewer, a former All Black flanker and captain, will be key to Scotland's effectiveness though, since the days of being bullied by bigger opponents should be behind them and it is more down to skills and disciplines.

It seems that, in terms of method, his is a modern outlook. "Mike's been working to get his points across," said Hogg. "He's not been doing it by screaming and shouting. It's more a case of pulling you aside and putting forward ideas on how to do things better."

Naturally, with so many new relationships being established, the focus of the work has been on themselves.

"We are really looking forward to next week's match but we've not talked a lot about the All Blacks to date," said Hogg. "That's going to come next week when we get down to doing a bit of analysis but so far we have been concentrating on ourselves. Time will tell exactly how everything will work. We've only had a week together so it's a case of finding out what we're capable of."

That in turn is wholly in line with the attitudes being driven into the Edinburgh players - they formed the largest group in the national squad - by Andy Robinson, their club coach.

He has sought to instill in them a mentality that concentrates fully on doing their jobs for themselves and their team-mates and that comes across in Hogg's response to the prospect of facing the world's two best sides over the next two weekends.

"We know we've got the capability of beating anyone on our day," he said, adding for emphasis: "That goes for anyone, no matter what their ranking."