Kelly Brown helped make history on his first appearance as a senior Scotland player at Pittodrie seven years ago and he is hoping to do so again by registering his first victory as national captain at the Aberdeen ground tomorrow.
The 30-year-old back-row forward was part of the team that registered Scotland's first win over the Bar-barians in what was Frank Hadden's first match in charge of the national side in 2005 and the following week he made a try-scoring Test debut in a 39-19 defeat of Romania in Bucharest.
This time around, Scotland arrive in the Granite City on the back of defeats in Brown's first two matches as captain, but he was still in upbeat mood yesterday. "It was a very exciting start to my Scotland career," he said. "It's always good to be up here and we're looking forward to it
"What's been great is to see the excitement in the city. All the guys have been out visiting schools or clubs and there's a real buzz around the place which is obviously because they don't see international sport up here that often."
Brown is by no means alone in feeling good about being in Aberdeen. Scott Lawson, who is making just his second start in his last 22 appearances for his country, also made his debut in that match while Max Evans made a try-scoring debut at Pittodrie three years later. However, the captain knows that he and his men cannot live on either reputation or records and must earn the right to maintain a 100% record that extends to three matches, against the Barbarians in 2005, Canada and 2008 and Samoa two years ago.
"We've obviously got good memories of the place, but in international sport, as soon as you expect something to happen, nine times out of 10 it won't, so it's up to us to make sure we go out there firing on all cylinders and make it happen," he noted.
As for his own need to get off the mark as a Scotland captain, Brown preferred to look at the wider picture. "It's not about me. It's about the team being successful and that's all I'm interested in," he added. "Every time I play, I want to win. In the first two matches, I think we've shown in patches what we can do but for us it's about going out there and nailing an 80-minute performance.
"Obviously, it would have been better if we'd won [against New Zealand and South Africa] but I've enjoyed the challenge. I've enjoyed the experience and I feel honoured to have been asked to captain Scotland and I'll strive to do as good a job as I can for as long as I have that honour."
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