IT HAS become one of the coaching cliches to pretend they agonise over every position before deciding not to make any changes; so it counts as a refreshing dose of honesty that Vern Cotter, the man in charge of Scotland, admitted that sending the same team out to face New Zealand that had ripped Argentina to shreds for an hour had been a quick rubber-stamp job.

In the real world, it was inevitable, particularly after young players like Adam Ashe at No.8 came in and with 13 carries and 17 tackles led the statistics for both teams on both counts. "It's part and parcel of the position," Ashe shrugged. "I like to get myself involved, I try to get a high ball-carry and tackle account. It's big focus going into games.

"This week I'm going to be hit harder, but there's no reason to back off. Part of the challenge is taking it to them as a team. Personally, I look to have the same influence on the game by getting myself on the ball and getting stuck in."

Where the coaches did take their time to agonise over who to bring in and who to leave out was in deciding how to handle the bench. The result was four changes, one forced by the concussion suffered by Henry Pyrgos, the scrum-half. This time mobility and scavenging power were given priority over set-piece expertise.

That means three changes among the replacement forwards: Fraser Brown for Scott Lawson at hooker, Tim Swinson for Jim Hamilton at lock and Johnnie Beattie for Alasdair Strokosch in the back row. Chris Cusiter comes in for Pyrgos.

"We spent a couple of hours looking at the All Blacks and scratching our heads with most things," said Cotter. "One thing clear was that they improve as the game goes on. They are happy to weather the storm at the start and accelerate. I notice they have a strong bench, so I imagine that is one of the things they will try to do to us - they will try to tire us and accelerate in the last 20 minutes, so it was important to have the ability and the defensive strength in reserve. Those are tactical changes we made."

Clearly, what he wants to see is more of the type of rugby they produced against Argentina but played at an even higher standard and sustained for longer. "Logic will say we have no chance of winning this, reasonable people will say we have no chance of winning it, but our players have big hearts and will want to give it a crack. That is why we are focusing on what we can do, what we can try to develop so that we can be competitive right to the end," he said. "If we can have a performing scrum, it may give us a point of access. If we have a lineout thatcan give us close to 100% like last week we will give ourselves an opportunity to attack. Those are things that we are looking at.

"The only advice I can give the players is that you concentrate on the things that you can control. We know this game will be important because we will get a good look at ourselves against the best team in the world and that will test those kind of things. You focus on the present, the past is something there is no point wasting energy on and so is the future. If you concentrate fully on the present and try to execute, then you may give yourself a chance."

The "give it a go" refrain has been there for the last couple of weeks and Cotter used this selection to echo it yet again: "After 80 minutes we will have a better understanding of where we are at but the idea is to have a go.

"They players have big hearts and want to measure themselves. It is a brave nation, brave peope, so it is not going to be lack of courage that stops us getting up and having a go at them.

"We will analyse this game and it will give us a better understanding of where we are at. I know the players are ready, they are preparing as well as possible to confront them, compete with them, put them under pressure. That is all we are focusing on."