On the last day of 2014, England coach Stuart Lancaster hosted a media gathering in which he told his audience that the forthcoming Rugby World Cup would be the most open ever played.

"I think the real strength of this World Cup in 2015 is the number of teams that can win it," he said. "If you look across the board there are six, seven or eight teams that have the potential."

So much for the Lancaster board. What do the world rankings say? Look at that table and the teams in sixth, seventh and eighth places are Wales, France and Scotland. Does he really think we are in with a shout?

Probably not, but Scots can probably feel more confident about the 2015 World Cup now than they did after the 2011 event. Then, the side led by Andy Robinson had just crashed out at the end of the group stages, the first time in the history of the tournament that they had failed to reach the knockout phase.

They had made a rod for their own backs by going into the event with such a low seeding that they were placed in the same pool as England and Argentina, who had finished second and third at the 2007 World Cup. This year, however, the rugby gods have smiled on the Scots, whose fate is now likely to be decided by their clash with Samoa in Newcastle on October 10. Win that and the chances are they will go through to the last eight.

It is, arguably, a seedings anomaly, albeit a predictable one as the draw was made far too early - based on world rankings three years before the event gets under way. That same preposterous format has also contrived to place England, Wales and Australia in the same pool. Three of the top-six sides in the world in the same group? Madness.

Perversely, it would serve the tournament organisers right if England tumbled out at that stage. No doubt the "anyone but England" brigade would enjoy a laugh at their expense as well, but it would be a disaster for the tournament as a whole. The lesson of every Rugby World Cup has been that the event needs its host nation to put in a decent run.

It also needs focus. Already, there is a concern that the tournament has been spread too thinly. Thirteen venues will be used over the six-week course of the tournament - three of them in London alone. Exeter's Sandy Park is a wonderful, compact ground, but it is devilishly difficult to see what Devon will gain from staging Tonga v Namibia, Namibia v Georgia or Italy v Romania.

The mind goes back too easily to 1999, the last time the World Cup was hosted in these islands. It was, quite literally, all over the place, spread across five countries and 18 stadia. It was a disastrous, disorganised mess, the last hurrah of a generation of bungling, amateur officials, made worse by the refusal of any of them to volunteer responsibility for anything.

The bunglers have long since moved on and moved out. These days, the mechanics of running the Rugby World Cup is in the hands of that army of professional organisers who hop from global event to global event and from continent to continent. Perhaps the downside is that great sporting occasions now have a sanitised and formulaic feel. But at least they start on time.

The wider world of sport is doing its bit by clearing the decks for rugby, too. We have grown used to a calendar that unfolds as a sporting smorgasbord, with one great, heaving plateful after another, but in the wake of 2014's football World Cup, Commonwealth Games and Ryder Cup, the menu looks rather lighter this year. Cricket's World Cup --Scotland included - takes place in Australia and New Zealand throughout February and March, but that, as they say, is pretty much your lot.

So how is the world's eighth-best team looking right now? Are we entitled to feel optimistic after Scotland's buoyant autumn Test performances, or should we focus instead on the fact that they still lost to what was, for the most part, a second-string New Zealand side? Should we hail Vern Cotter as the nation's saviour, or remember that the sprightly starts of his two immediate predecessors gave way to some depressingly humdrum performances?

Or should we just wait? Cotter's record to date is respectable as he has harvested five wins from seven outings, but not one of those victories was against a higher-ranked side. Nor has he yet sent a team out in a compet-itive match in which something beyond pride was at stake.

So the Six Nations will be critical. Scotland's green shoots have a habit of wilting in spring, but if Cotter can sustain them and his side can finish third or better then something could genuinely be taking shape with the crop of young players he has brought together.