Great result but now the hard work begins

On paper, Australia are a stronger proposition than Saturday's visitors to Murrayfield, Argentina, but it is imperative that Scotland shake off any post-Wallaby hangover and chalk up another win against the Pumas.

Yes it was lovely to finally end a 27-year famine against the Aussies and yes we did put in a great display of tackling to pull it off but who's going to remember all that should we be mauled by Argentina?

Coach Andy Robinson has talked about progression and that can only be achieved by building up consistency with regard to winning matches.

Great teams usually beat a foe who at worst is their equal and then going on to beat whoever else is served up in front of them.

After all, what progress will have been made in beating Australia only to lose to an Argentine side in transition and afflicted by injuries?

But for the time being we must inevitably reflect on the Australia win because Scotland doing a number on one of the big three southern hemisphere giants (make that two seeing as a couple of draws is the best we've done against the All-Blacks) is as rare as a New Zealander not blaming everyone but themselves for a World Cup exit.

If we are being brutally honest, this game was won via means of rugby's equivalent to catennaccio - the system often used by the Italian football team of soaking up what the opposition can throw at you and hitting them on the counter-attack. In short, we mugged the Wallabies.

But then again, tough. We have seen it done many times over to Scotland in the past with New Zealand's get-out-of-jail act in the second test of our tour there in 1990 being the one that probably rankles the most.

Credit to most Australians who have taken this one on the chin and credited Scotland's rearguard effort. Mind, there are usually one or two who over-indulge on the sour grapes with one fellow colleague from down under labelling Scotland as "second-rate" and as being "unimaginative scrappers".

Second-rate teams usually don't out-work and out-think their opponents and, when the tide of attacking play is firmly in their favour, they do not kill off the opposition. Australia did not kill Scotland off when they had the chance to do so.

On paper, Australia are not second-rate and will probably bounce back to blow everyone else away in due course. But in allowing themselves to get sucked into Scotland's trap and in showing no ability to think out of the box and break out, for 80 minutes at least, they slipped into that degrading label used by one of their fellow countrymen.

As for 'unimaginative scrapping' - it is not Scotland's problem if Australia lacked the imagination to avoid such a scrap.

The likes of Wallaby greats like Tim Horan, Ben Tune and David Campese could always conjure something up to avoid being denied a try or five. If the current Aussie crop can't then, as stated earlier, it is not Scotland's concern.

Of course Scotland does have room for improvement and coach Robinson and stand-in skipper Al Kellock said as much afterwards.

Australia had far too much of the ball for both coach and captain's liking and no doubt making better use of it when we have it will no doubt be worked on in training - the passage of play which led to Phil Godman's second successful penalty aside, we rarely threatened their try-line. After all, you would bank on France and Ireland having a few more tricks up their sleeves than the Aussies to breach any defence no matter how tenacious it is.

But Rome wasn't built in a day and Robinson is still building a platform to get Scotland back to where we were 10 years ago of competing against the best.

Still, a victory against one of the big three has given this restoration a timely boost.