While it is no shock that everybody in the stands will be hoping that the second-string Scots pull out a memorable performance tomorrow, it’s a bit more of a surprise that so do New Zealand. There is real concern that if the game turns into the kind of mismatch that the opening game against Italy became, then they will go into the quarter-finals without having had a competitive match since June.

All of which might explain why it was not just the Scotland players and coaches who were building up the threat of the team in blue tomorrow (the All Blacks will be in a silver-grey), so were the opposition. “I looked at them in the week and they are pretty exciting,” Luke McAllister, the centre, said in a typical show of respect. “They obviously put a lot of work into moving the ball round the field, and have been scoring some good tries. We have had a look at them and pinpointed some of the players to watch.

“We are all professional players who have been around the game for a long time. I would not say the other games were easy, they were pretty good hit-outs, but Scotland will be the hardest game in the pool and will put us in good stead for the quarter-finals.”

McAllister is joining Sale Sharks after the World Cup – “I’ll come over with an open mind, looking for a different style of rugby and a different challenge. I hope I only improve by heading into the unknown,” he says – and partly because that will effectively end his New Zealand career, at least for the time being, he is desperate to finish on a high, with a winner’s medal in his luggage.

“There is a lot of expectation from the New Zealand public on us,” he said. “We have talked about it and put it to one side. We have our own values and own standards so we can forget about the pressures on us and focus on what we have to do at this World Cup. We know the pressure is there but we have stopped thinking about it, we are concentrating on what we can control. I take the support from home, not the negative side of it.” The match will see him reforming the centre partnership with Conrad Smith that many in New Zealand believe is the best available to Graham Henry, and McAllister for one is happy to see the two teaming up again now that Smith is over his hamstring injury. “It is exciting, I like the way he plays which is slightly differently to the way I do. We have not had a chance to play together much recently but it does not make any real difference, you work it out during training.”

And if the Scots are hoping that the weather will be an ally in this game, then he has some bad news there as well: “It is not a problem coming to Scotland, the only difference is probably the weather, which is pretty much what we would have at home at the moment, what we are used to.”

So everything is set up for another storming New Zealand performance with McAllister and his colleagues expecting and hoping for the best from Scotland – but only so that they can use it to hone their own challenge.