Townsend’s men made All Blacks look ordinary

light in the closing stages, it was the home team carrying all the momentum when the final whistle sounded.

They were disappointed to the point of being distraught by the final result, obviously.

When try scorer Jonny Gray tried to describe the ‘horrible feeling’ of coming up short in pursuit of a first ever victory over the All Blacks, everyone in the room winced at his obvious pain.

Amid the emotional wreckage of a loss, however, there is a sense of direction and purpose.

Scrum-half Ali Price, firmly focused now on this weekend’s visit of Australia, is adamant that Townsend’s vision of a New Scotland will definitely pay dividends.

‘We want to play at tempo,’ said the Glasgow star. ‘You see that. I feel like we’re an exciting team to watch. Teams can’t rest against us, regardless of where the ball is. And we’ve got the fitness.

‘We back ourselves. If we’re in games with 60 minutes gone, we back ourselves to be fitter than anybody else. We were just five metres off from getting the result.

‘It’s really important that we win now. We’ve got a couple of things to work on, accuracy really.

‘We want to be sitting next week with a win under our belts. If we bring the same intensity, along with accuracy, we will be there.

‘We want to prove that this wasn’t a one-off. We put in a pretty handy performance against New Zealand. I don’t think anyone gave us a hope in hell, all week.

‘We just went about our training and knew that, if we played our game, we would give ourselves a good shot. And we nearly did it.

‘We’re geared up to beat Australia now. We won the last game against them — and we’ll be looking to continue that.’

Price was involved in one of the more odd moments on Saturday, appearing to get a telling-off from pernickety referee Matthew Carley for daring to gee up the Murrayfield crowd ahead of an All

Blacks line-out. Seriously, ref? ‘I was a bit over enthusiastic,’ said a grinning Price. ‘I just get caught up in the moment. We want the ball in play. If they can’t hear the lineout calls because it’s too noisy, well, we still want the ball in.

‘I gave him the puppy eyes and said sorry. He was all right after that! There’s not much I can do in the front line. I’m a little guy but I can bring energy.

‘If you’ve got 67,000 people behind you, you don’t understand the buzz that can bring to the team.

‘For the big men especially, it means when they think they’re tired they’re not tired; they can still get off the line and put those hits in.’

The big lads did that for 80 minutes. Even when replacements were being replaced, leaving Scotland with a hooker playing in the back row, they kept at it.

And, sure, if Carley had been brave enough to yellow card Waisake Naholo instead of being talked out of it by the TMO, or if he’d awarded a penalty try for repeated infringements by New Zealand under pressure, maybe things would have turned out differently.

As it turned out, all the Scots earned were plaudits. With particular praise due to a coach who, in the week since the sloppy win over Samoa, had really shown his ability to turn things around.

Even among those who mourned the departure of Vern Cotter, it should now be obvious why the SRU were so desperate to promote Townsend to the most important job in the game.

He’ll need to go to the well again this weekend, trying to patch up a squad including a number of players who will be no more than a walking bruise until Friday.

But the memory of running the All Blacks so close should anaesthetise some of the dull aches and pains.

Stuart Hogg, long since established as the torch bearer for this exciting generation, hit on something when he said that Scotland had been ‘on the brink of something bloody special’.

You might still be, Stuart. You might still be.