Since teaming up together six years ago a trio of British & Irish Lions men have turned into the most prolific back three in Scottish rugby history.

Just one short of a combined half century of Test match tries, Stuart Hogg, Tommy Seymour and Sean Maitland the former Glasgow Warriors trio have established themselves together, in spite of emerging at the same time as another prolific finisher, Tim Visser having rattled in 14 scores in his 33 match career, still a couple more than Maitland has mustered.

Hogg and Seymour are both meanwhile homing in on one of the oldest records in the sport, Ian Smith having ended his career in 1933 having maintained an astonishing strike-rate of three tries in every four matches throughout a nine year career which saw him play 32 matches. His tally was matched 21 years ago when Tony Stanger, scorer of the most celebrated of Scottish tries in the 1990 Grand Slam decider, registered his 24th on the day he made the last of his 52 appearances. The scale of the feat was subsequently demonstrated when Chris Paterson got within two in 2007 while still in his twenties, yet in spite of going on to break appearance and points scoring records in playing another 31 Tests, he never crossed the opposition line again.

Of the current back three Seymour ended something of a barren run in November with a hat-trick against Fiji that nudged him back in front of Hogg, who responded on Saturday to level things up on 19 and should have moved back in front, but for a refereeing blunder, all of which has added an additional intrigue to their efforts.

Having moved into his thirties last summer, Seymour claims to be resigned to the fact that his 26-year-old clubmate will be the man who finishes his career on top, but they are revelling in the healthy rivalry.

“He’s got a few years on me (so) over the long run there’s not going to be too much competition, but we enjoy it now,” the winger suggested.

“We are level pegging now. He was winding me up and I was winding him up. His second try got chalked off at the weekend which was very unlucky for him because it was a fantastic finish, but that’s maybe given me a little bit of an opportunity. We have some fun with it, but the main thing is that we play well as a team and that we are scoring tries, wherever they come from. If we are playing the kind of rugby we want to we are in a good position.”

Not that they can rest on their laurels, the injury which ruled Maitland out of the Six Nations meeting with Italy having created an opening that was seized upon by Edinburgh youngster Blair Kinghorn, whose hat-trick took him to six tries in just eight Test appearances.

“He played well, didn’t he,” said Seymour. “Obviously you want to be getting across for tries, so I’d have loved a try myself, but the really pleasing thing is we played some really good stuff. I can honestly say I’m chuffed for the guy. He played a brilliant game and took the chances he was provided with really well. He’s the first Scotsman to score a hat-trick in the Six Nations, so brilliant for the young fella to get an achievement like that and get in the history books.”

Scotland also failed to take several opportunities in the course of Saturday’s meeting and while they got away with that against the struggling Italians they know, not least because of what happened when they similarly let chances slip in Dublin a year ago, that they are very unlikely to do so against the defending champions. As ever, however, their focus remains on the things they did well, while Seymour reckons that there is even a positive to be taken from the timely reminder of what can happen if they drop their standards.

“We did a lot of really good things. I think certainly for the first 65 minutes I thought we showed some really good play, did a lot of things well,” he said

“I thought we were accurate in a lot of the things we were trying to do. Good sparks of creativity and we obviously got the bonus point wrapped up as well, which was awesome. On the flip side, w e’ve looked at being quite strong in the last 20 minutes normally. It’s something we pride ourselves on, so to concede the points we did in the last 15 minutes is disappointing.

“We probably found ourselves chasing them round the park a little bit, which wasn’t great, but it’s probably a good thing for us. With the first 65 minutes going so well, it gave us a reality check. It brings us back down to earth a little bit about things that can go wrong if we’re not fully switched on or we start to think the job’s done. Credit to Italy, they played some really good stuff, but certainly from our perspective it’s something we can use this week, because Ireland will bring that intensity for 80 minutes plus. We’ll be conscious of that.”