YOU had to go back to Ally MacLeod and 1978 for the last time a group of Scottish heroes received such an enthusiastic send-off to a world finals. That year was also the last time Great Britain reached the showpiece match of the Davis Cup, going down 4-1 to a John McEnroe-inspired USA team at Mission Hills, while the previous occasion when a British team actually claimed the trophy donated by the competition's founder and Harvard student Dwight Davis came back in 1936 when Fred Perry was still in his pomp. After Andy Murray completed the next phase of this unlikely Scottish/British success story with his third win of the weekend, this time 7-5, 6-3, 6-2 against Bernard Tomic, two nations were on the march with Andy's army. With only Belgium or Argentina left to face, our chances of winning the World Cup of tennis are already far more realistic than they ever were with the football equivalent.

While the World No 3 is a one-man tennis machine who has now racked up 31 Davis Cup wins, it takes the stars to align to make a tilt at a competition like this. Five years ago, after all, when this unlikely British success story began, Murray was correctly deeming it as an unnecessary burden on his quest for world domination. His first coach Leon Smith inherited a side on the brink of relegation to the third tier of Euro/Africa Zone, an abyss from which not all nations recover.

Since then, the Scot's plans have come together like those of George Peppard's character in an episode of the A-Team. While many have played their part over the years, and this year too, the main reason is the growing awareness that 2015 is the year Andy Murray has chosen to continue to redefine what is possible. Along for the ride are his brother Jamie, whose rise to No 8 in the doubles rankings could not be more timely, another doubles specialist in the form of Dom Inglot, and three singles pals in the form of James Ward, Dan Evans and Kyle Edmund, whose games he has nourished.

Wally Masur, the Australian Davis Cup captain, still had a few cards to play after Andy and Jamie had recorded that sensational victory in the doubles on Saturday, but in the form of Andy Smith always knew he possessed the trump card. Masur could have given Lleyton Hewitt one last chance to rage against the light in this competition before he retires after the Aussie Open in January but the 34-year-old had played the same four hours of tennis on Sunday that Murray had and it turned out that was his last. With Thanasi Kokkinakis given further experience against Evans in the last, dead rubber, instead, the Aussies stuck with Bernard Tomic, the 24-year-old World No 23, who had been extended by World No 300 Evans even during his four-set victory on Friday.

The form guide wasn't exactly in his favour. He had lost both of his previous meetings with Murray but then there wasn't a single Australian in the history of the sport who had done any better. Another mind boggling stat when it comes to this world class Scot is the fact that he has never lost a singles match to any Aussie opponent, losing just three times to Antipodeans on the doubles court - Jordan Kerr, Ashley Fisher and his brother's partner John Peers in Montreal only a month ago.

The Scottish public have learned to love tennis. They have taken their cues from Andy Murray. They have watched him often enough on the TV to turn up in Glasgow feeling this would be a routine assignment and the Scot did little to discourage that notion. There were no signs of nerves or physical frailty with that troublesome back following his 18-hour turnaround in the way he marched out and sent down two aces in the first three points, each one of them guaranteeing £200 to Unicef towards the refugee crisis.

There was the odd flash of genius from Tomic but it didn't take long before he was fighting a desperate rearguard action here. He survived a deuce on his first service game, only to find Murray three break points to the good in his second. A Murray staple, an immaculate top spin lob to within inches of the baseline, did the damage on break point and Tomic could only net.

The late 70's theme continued with a blast of the Bay City Rollers, something of a Murray family favourite, but the party couldn't get started until a minor wobble was out the way. With the Scot serving for the first set, and momentarily discomforted by the ring of a mobile phone (conventional this time, rather than the version of Beethoven's Fur Elise which punctured the quiet earlier on) a rare Murray backhand dropped into the tramlines and the Australian had managed to restore equilibrium at 5-5.

Tomic's respite didn't last long. Soon he was staring down the barrel of three set points, and while the first two were bravely saved, the 24-year-old had no answer to the immaculate drop shot which won the third, the ball seeming to spin on its axis before dropping dead.

There were no histrionics from the occasionally temperamental Tomic here, just a realisation that this one was getting away from him fast. Another Murray lob during an imperious second set had him standing perplexed with his hands on his hips.

Another favourite on the PA system was 'Human' by the Killers, rather appropriate considering the World No 3's efforts this weekend over seven hours of play were verging on superhuman. For an instant, his emotions swelled by the crescendo of the crowd as he served for the tie, he appeared human again. When one Tomic return flew out, this Scottish superman had re-established Britain as a tennis superpower.