Defeats at the hands of both Ireland and Wales at Murrayfield, sandwiching another in Paris… it is hard to imagine a worse preparation for a trip to a venue that has witnessed just four Scottish victories in 48 attempts, but the current team’s compatriots had negotiated that same sequence of defeats as they sought to avoid a whitewash in 1983.

It can be argued that the odds were stacked even more heavily against them back then, Scotland having failed to beat their oldest international opponents home or away for seven years at that point, but it was the match which elevated a classy player into an acknowledged great of the game.

John Rutherford had not played international rugby since the previous year’s tour of Australia during which this most vaunted of Scottish play-makers amazingly reckons to have led to him learning how to kick a rugby ball properly during a post-match discussion with opposite number Paul McLean after the Wallaby had been recalled to help his side avenge the previous week’s rare defeat by the tourists.

An achilles tendon problem had sidelined Rutherford for the previous three matches and his involvement at Twickenham was a risk, but drilled by Jim Telfer the Scottish pack’s rucking superiority set the platform for Rutherford and his great friend Roy Laidlaw, to control a match which would see Scotland dominate the second half, Laidlaw and debutant lock Tom Smith scoring tries as they ran out 22-12 winners.

To illustrate the unlikeliness of the outcome this was the 20th and last Five Nations Championship away game played by another Scotland and Borders great Jim Renwick, his then record-equalling 51st Scotland appearance in all, yet it was of only two away wins he enjoyed in a 12-year international career which would end with defeat in Romania the following year.

While he would be the last to say so, it was the return of the McLean-enhanced Rutherford that was the key to a victory which would set up the 1984 Grand Slam triumph and few who have represented Scotland have been blessed with a sunnier disposition than the Selkirk stand-off.

Even an encounter with cancer with which he has been engaged in recent times, the same strain that claimed the life of younger brother Billy, has not changed that, merely bringing out the evangelist in him as he misses no opportunity to advocate the need for men to undertake the PSA testing that he reckons saved his life.

He admits it has been “scary” time that has put things into perspective to the extent that many things that no longer concern him as they once did, but the passion for Scottish rugby remains strong and, just as he naturally remembers that great day at Twickenham with some fondness, so there is a typical readiness to seek inspiration from it.

“I came back because I was desperate to get picked for the Lions, so it was a big game for me and we deserved to win that one,” he recalled.

“As ever we had to hang on a bit, but I just thought we played smarter than them, we took our chances and that’s what we’ve got to do this time when you think about it.”

In saying so, there is an admission that it is hard to make a case for the 36 year wait to end today, but his outlook differs from many compatriots in his laughing contention that: “You’re Scottish, you have to be an optimist.

“It will be a surprise if we win on Saturday. It’s a tough ask and to be fair to the national squad, they’re missing a lot of good players but, funny enough, I was speaking to some mates about it last night and all we could come up with is that it is the most unlikely moment when Scotland does well. It’s when we really feel down and out.”

His own career, albeit as coach rather than player, extended to an occasion when there was even less justification for optimism than in 1983, when he was working under the man who had been his first Scotland captain and his immediate predecessor as stand-off Ian McGeechan.

“It’s right to bring that up, because we hadn’t won a game that year and they had won everything,” he said, when reminded of that odds-defying win in Millennium year which saw Duncan Hodge score all his team’s points in a 19-13 win as a Scotland team that had lost its previous four championship matches, rock opponents who were cruising towards a Grand Slam until that last weekend, scoring 170 points in their previous four matches.

“The weather helped us that day. It was shocking and they tried to run everything, which we thought they would do with Clive (Woodward) in charge of them and they made so many mistakes and we managed to stay in the game.

“Just like any international, if you stay in the game long enough you do get a moment, or moments, when you come into the game and that’s what happened in the last 10 or 15 minutes. You could see our boys getting a lot of confidence, because the score was so close and then we really took it to them and Hodgey got that two yard try.

“The big difference, though, is that it was at Murrayfield and you have to build that into your judgement, but if England have a poor game and we can produce the sort of second half performance that saw us completely outplay Wales for 40 minutes, then you never know, you never know.”

In order to generate an upset he believes the Scots will, as ever, have a good idea of what will confront them and must use their intelligence to overcome English power.

“We will know what’s coming again, but where we had an advantage in 2000 is that we had prepared for a wet weather game. Geech was smart enough to appreciate what the long-term weather forecast was and we spent a lot of time playing a one/two-pass game, driving lineouts and getting in behind them as quickly as we could,” he noted.

It is unlikely that such help will be forthcoming from the elements, but in the 26-year-old who matched his own cap haul last weekend, he believes Scotland has a play-maker who has the ability to give them a chance.

“I’m very fond of him,” Rutherford said of Finn Russell.

“We keep in touch, we text each other. I’ve met up with him two or three times just for a chat and I think he takes things on board, but he’s his own man.

“All I would say is that he just has to get that balance right with being a bit more pragmatic and I felt that on Saturday he got that. He started to put the ball behind Wales, which you have to do with big backs, because if you play everything in front of them you’re just going to get smashed. Then the forwards started driving, which we had to do as well, take them on physically. It was a good second half against Wales and I assume the coaches will use a lot of that performance to motivate them and show them how good they can be.”

The rare gift both share is that they have that rare capacity of being believable when expressing genuine confidence in their ability and that of their teams, to defy logic.

On paper, then, Scotland have no realistic chance today which, according to Rutherford’s law of probabilities, suggests there is every likelihood that they will win.