GREAT scenes at Murrayfield on Saturday. But for all Gregor Townsend’s shrewd game-planning, Finn Russell’s floated passes and Huw Jones’ bludgeoning running, all of which combined seductively to see Scotland capture the Calcutta Cup for the first time in a decade, perhaps the one thing which stayed with me most was Ryan Wilson, Owen Farrell and that pre-match bust-up in the tunnel.

What the England centre was playing at as he rampaged back up to the dressing room wasn’t entirely clear, but Scotland’s big Number Eight was having none of it, and what followed were the kind of scenes not usually spied on the playing fields of Eton. Rugby is a sport where brutality is legalised – and I’m sure certain living rooms across the land looked on disapprovingly - but it seemed to me that this episode actually didn’t do Scotland any harm. It was a signal that the Scots weren't actually going to be pushed around and as pre-emptive strikes go, it was up there with David Sole’s studied walk out against the Auld Enemy in the Grand Slam match of 1990. If not Robert the Bruce splitting Henry de Bohun’s head open with his axe as a precursor to the Battle of Bannockburn.

While TV cameras also showed the image of a teenage rugby fan, his face half a saltire and half a St George’s cross, I was strangely cheered by the Scotland fans who booed Swing Low Sweet Chariot or jeered to get their own back on Eddie Jones. The Scots are a hospitable nation but less so when we suspect that their house guests are getting out of order.

And in truth, my suspicion is that Scotland and Scottish sports people in general tend to play better when they have a bit of an edge to their game. When the time is right, and preferably within the discipline of the game, Scotland has a proud history of sporting bampottery. It is something which should be celebrated, not castigated.

Rugby seems as good a place as any to start. Okay, Scotland’s previous Grand Slam teams had the ball skills of John Rutherford and Craig Chalmers at the helm, but the likes of Gary Armstrong and John Jeffrey were hewn from granite, Borderers who would have had little truck with whatever Farrell threw at Wilson on Saturday.

In football, Scotland perfected the football ‘hard man’ to the degree that our declining relevance as a nation in the sport can be carbon dated back to the rule changes which made it far harder to get away with low level acts of violence. Guys like Dave Mackay, Billy Bremner and Graeme Souness weren’t just world class players, they were leaders of men, who inspired their team-mates and intimidated their opponents in equal measure via their mere presence on the pitch.

The rest of the world may have moved on, but the equivalent of these big beasts still roam across Scottish domestic football. For evidence of what David Attenborough might call the battle to be Scottish football’s alpha male, just watch Scott Brown getting the ball smashed against him by various Aberdeen players last weekend, then getting to his feet and pumping his fists at the travelling support in a strange kind of ecstasy. Or just watch teenage boys doing likewise at any academy or boys clubs match across the country.

Even genteel, individual sports like tennis require the hide of a rhino. For some reason people sometimes suggest that Andy Murray is psychologically weak but who could forget him calling the giant Juan Martin del Potro out on court for a comment made about his mother Judy, or the way Ivan Lendl taught him – when confronted at the net – to simply hit the ball through his opponent to discourage them from doing so again.

While Murray requires those powers of self reliance to rebuild himself after that hip problem, now a new generation - led by Glasgow’s Aidan McHugh must follow the example. For all his ability, it will be his ability to push himself to the limit and display the killer instinct which defines the parameters of his career. At the World Indoor Athletics Championships in Birmingham tonight, Laura Muir will attempt to show hers, against a field which consists of the rock stars of female world distance running.

So long may it continue, this mean streak which most of Scotland’s top sporting performers exhibit. Rather than playing with a fear factor, let’s instil that in others.