Form is temporary, class is permanent runs the old sporting saw that is sometimes attributed to football guru Bill Shankly and commonly associated with cricketing stylist David Gower, but it seems that Scotland’s rugby management are also followers of that philosophy on the basis of their selections for the first major challenge of this season’s Six Nations Championship.

This season’s schedule represents the opportunity that Scottish management teams have longed for since the competition was extended in Millennium year, a first ever opening match at home against Italy, to be followed up with another home match against opponents who are carrying no momentum from the opening weekend.

There consequently had to be at least a temptation to minimise changes to a winning team. Two were forced upon them, with WP Nel and Sam Skinner ruled out by injury, resulting in the men who replaced them, Simon Berghan and Josh Strauss, getting their chances to start. More intriguingly, however, they have opted to recall Sean Maitland and Jonny Gray despite compelling cases having been made for the retention of those who took their regular places last weekend.

The decision to drop Blair Kinghorn looks particularly harsh in the context of his well taken and historic hat-trick against Italy, not least because of the extra dimension the young Edinburgh full-back’s considerable physical presence offers, but as head coach Gregor Townsend pointed out, Maitland has been scoring regularly at Test level, with five in the last 12 months, including one in the win against England last year and the only touchdown of the game when Argentina were beaten in the last match of the autumn.

The performance of the front five last weekend was meanwhile a little less convincing, Scotland’s inability to generate enough of the right type of possession a contributory factor to their failure to take full advantage of the territorial advantage they enjoyed for much of the match. That, though, is an extremely harsh critique and, given the emphasis Scotland’s coaches have previously placed upon the benefits of fielding established units, some consideration surely had to be given to keeping faith with players who have regularly performed so well for Edinburgh this season, not least in their derby wins over Gray’s Glasgow Warriors, as well as in topping their Champions Cup pool.

As he offered his explanation of the selection, however, Townsend indicated that trust is being placed in those who have earned it through past performance, most notably when beating Ireland two years ago, Maitland, Gray and Strauss all having been in the starting line-up that day, while Berghan was also in that match 22, albeit he did not get off the bench. Fraser Brown, the hooker who is brought into this week’s match 23 in spite of not having played any rugby for two months, was another who started that day and in stressing the importance of experience, Townsend said that extends to knowing how to come back at Test level after a lengthy lay-off.

“Experience is required… and experience of players who are ready to go and have delivered before for us when they’ve come back from injury, whether that’s Jonny or Fraser,” he said. “Fraser last year missed a few games, came back off the bench against Ireland then started in Italy game the following week and was very good. It is important when you’re playing against one of the best teams in the world, a team that has been consistent, that hasn’t lost many games over the past two or three years, that those players who know what it’s about and have been in these games for you before are there on the field.

“It would have been great to have WP and Sam also available, so it’s disappointing for them to miss out, but we were always aiming for the comebacks of Fraser, Jonny, Sean and Pete (Horne, who is also recalled to the bench) and they’ve got through rehab, got through training, the last couple of weeks and they really provide a boost to everyone. They’ve been in these situations before, they’ve played well for Scotland, there’s experience now back in the team with Sean and Jonny, there’s experience on the bench with Fraser and Pete that we didn’t have as much last week. We know we’re going to have to deal with the Irish maul and dealing with the contact area’s going to be huge. Ireland tend to dominate possession, so there’s going to be a lot more tackles than a normal game. We’ve prepared well for that and Jonny and Fraser have come through that really well.”

That Horne is available, but must make his contribution off the bench is, particularly in the context of decisions elsewhere, quite a tribute to the way centre Sam Johnson performed on his debut, his selection the rule proving exception in terms of what was generally the decisive factor.

There is something of an irony in that all of those close calls went in favour of past and present Glasgow Warriors, given that their current head coach Dave Rennie has, in his time at Scotstoun, repeatedly stated that he chooses to select his teams on the basis of performance, rather than reputation. That, of course, is capable of being interpreted as a different way of declaring preference for form over perceived class, but either way, these are far preferable decisions to having to select teams from players boasting neither, as has too often been the case for Scotland managements in the professional era.