SCOTLAND

Last weekend was probably the best weekend in Europe that Scotland have had. There were two excellent performances.

Glasgow played some outstanding rugby on the way to winning in Cardiff and, although Toulon are not where they were before, for Edinburgh to get such a convincing result was very impressive.

Richard Cockerill is doing a fantastic job there. Edinburgh may have been seen in the shadow of Glasgow in the past, but they are right in the thick of their Champions Cup pool now thanks to that victory.

Scottish rugby needs both sides to be doing well. It also needs players to be heading into the national set-up with confidence, because that mood is essential to how Gregor Townsend wants to play – with speed and accuracy at the breakdown, playing through their mobile forwards and making use of that outside channel.

Dave Rennie has followed on at Glasgow from Gregor, who in turn has added his thinking to what Vern Cotter did with Scotland.

Tactically, Scotland will be very keen to keep their pace in the game. They looked dangerous last year when they broke the game up. We saw that in the last Six Nations.

Stuart Hogg is out but they have Finn Russell coming back from France, where he seems to be thriving.

It will be interesting to see who is picked for the Wales game in Cardiff on Saturday and then it feels like the key games are against Argentina and South Africa at Murrayfield.

They did well against Argentina in the summer, obviously, but the Springboks pose a very different challenge because of their strength up front.

Scotland must show that they are capable of varying their game against different opponents.