We know we are not the finished article, not by a long way. What we are looking for are signs of progress and I think that anybody would have seen those yesterday. There were a lot of positive signs in the way we defended and we cut the gain line several times without getting the reward that we should have.
Personally, it felt strange to be watching the game on television back at home in Galashiels after my injury put me out of the tour, normally I would expect to be part of a game like that. What I saw from the boys on the other side of the world was what I had expected in terms of the gameplan and almost what I had hoped for, in terms of putting that gameplan into action on the pitch more effectively than we had earlier in the season. Possibly the most encouraging aspect for me was the way that we were able to build phases, keeping the ball through eight, nine, 10 rucks and mauls. For any international team, that has to be the starting point for planning strategy and is something that we have not been doing so well recently.
I also thought we played a smart tactical game, with Dan Parks kicking for position well and keeping the pressure on the Australians. You have to learn to walk before you can run, so there is no point in Scotland trying to play a wide, expansive game and spreading the ball to the likes of Simon Webster on the wing before we have started to get the basics right. Seeing what I had hoped to see in that department, with the forwards driving effectively and recycling the ball, was one of the things that I found most encouraging. We had a lot of players choosing good options.
It was, of course, frustrating that for all our efforts we still came away with only one try from the two games but you have to remember how difficult it is to break down the Australian defence, which has been one of the best in the world for years. At least yesterday we succeeded in cracking the first line of that defence several times and attacked their line pretty well, which was better than the week before and is the first stage. The next is to start turning more of those opportunities into scores.
We have to take a leaf out of the Australian book and learn from the way that, almost every time they got to our try line, they stayed there, kept up the pressure and waited until somebody made a mistake that they could capitalise on. That’s the way they have been playing for a long time and they are very good at it, they never panic.
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We should take a lot of encouragement from the way that Jason White, Iain Fullarton and Andy Henderson broke though on 40- and 50-metre charges almost to the Wallaby line, and with a bit more composure we would have converted those opportunities into tries that would have changed the complexion of the game completely.
We are still at a very early stage of our learning process, and on the back of this performance I cannot wait to get Australia back to Murrayfield in the autumn when we will have had another few months to refine our style and develop further. I firmly believe that we are heading in the right direction and I know the other players feel the same way; it is a case of us having to keep calm, stick to the system and keep our patience.
The tour has been extremely important for Scotland. We have come through a testing time and over the last month we have really started to feel that we are coming together as a team with a lot more understanding. Individually, several of the players visibly grew in confidence and self-belief over the last four weeks and, as a unit, there is a group of players coming together who can take Scotland back towards the good times of being successful on the world stage again. That is exactly where we want to be.