When Scotland meet one of the leading Test nations it is customary for one team to be looking for a much-needed win and the other to be looking more towards more important matches ahead but there was an element of role reversal at The Grange yesterday.

Admittedly, as the host nation and Australia's tourists finalised their preparations for today's meeting, the visitors had half an eye on the forthcoming One Day International (ODI) series against England.

However, while they were admitting that getting the right result is the vital consideration for them after a summer of setbacks, the Scots are looking at today's game as an opportunity to pull their squad together ahead of two ODI meetings with Ireland that represent their last chance to gain qualification for the next World Cup.

"This is a good opportunity for us to get together as a group, to be competitive tomorrow against a very good Australian team and then we'll regroup and we move into a phase where we're playing Ireland and we all obviously know the importance of those games," said Peter Steindl, Scotland's head coach.

A native Aussie but now very much an adopted Scot after more than 20 years in the country as player and coach, Steindl said so in the context of knowing his side can never be considered as having much chance against such opponents.

There was a recent reminder of the gulf that exists between full-time professionals from Test nations and Steindl's players who, for the most part, aspire to contracts with English counties, when Australia A thrashed Scotland in three of four scheduled days in June.

"As a team we look at the individual wins we can get in any given day and if players can go in and find that they can compete at this level then they'll take a lot of confidence into the next games. I think you've got to have that sense of perspective," Steindl suggested.

"It was a tough game against Australia A. We don't play a huge amount of four-day cricket and that showed. At the same time you can have a look at some of the players who bounced back from that actual experience and they took some positives out of it. Guys like Callum MacLeod is an example, while Matt Machan learned a lot after that game and Ian Wardlaw as well. You've got to put yourself under pressure, find out what you're made of and then learn from it and move forward."

Among those who came through that experience while increasingly being asked to take on additional responsibility is Preston Mommsen, captain when Australia A were in Edinburgh in June and again now following Kyle Coetzer's withdrawal due to a wrist injury.

He is fully aware of what to expect, but also believes that in early autumn in Scotland he and his team have a chance of gaining a psychological boost ahead of renewing rivalries with the Irish.

"You can tell by the strength of their squad that they're not here for fun and games, they want to win, they want to get back to winning games and I think build that winning mentality among the Australian squad after what's been a tough Ashes series for them," said Mommsen. "However we want to take the game as deep as possible and give ourselves a chance of creating a good result. With conditions the way they are, these guys won't be used to this type of pitch so our bowling resources might be better suited to it and it might be a touch more difficult for them to score as freely as they're used to, so we've got to find a way of using that to our full advantage.

"This certainly provides us with another opportunity. We don't get them very often so we've got to put in a performance that gives us a chance of doing something that Ireland are used to doing now. We need to break that barrier and really kick on as a cricketing nation."

In saying so, he teasingly pointed out that the member of today's opposition he knows best, having played alongside George Bailey when he was Scotland's overseas professional a few seasons ago, has reason to feel under pressure.

"We played against him at the start of the season when he was playing for Hampshire and Gordon Drummond clean bowled him, so hopefully it will be a short stay again for him but obviously he's a fantastic talent," Mommsen said with a grin.

Scotland's captain also acknowledged that Bailey will be in a position to help his fellow Australians ready themselves, a point echoed by Matthew Wade, the tourists' wicket-keeper.

"We've got George Bailey in our camp who's seen a lot of these guys, so he'll give us some insight during our team meeting and we definitely won't be coming in blind," he said.

Nor, he confirmed, will they lack any motivation.

"This is a great opportunity to go out and get a win," said Wade, the only member of Australia's 18 man Ashes squad not to feature in a Test this summer. "We haven't had too many of those in the last couple of months so as a team that's our big focus."

The Australians know that after a 3-0 defeat in the Ashes Test series followed by a shared Twenty20 contest, one win apiece, they now have one last chance to shift the emphasis ahead of the forthcoming return series with the sequence of ODIs which begins today and continues into four more meetings with England. "We want to win every game we go out in, that's for sure, but it would be nice to go home with some momentum leading into the Ashes back home," said Wade.