As he steps out on to the pitch at the Vélez Sársfield Stadium in Buenos Aires for his 50th cap, Mike Blair will not be thinking about the landmark, or even about Chris Paterson, his team-mate winning his 88th cap to set a new Scottish record. He promises that his entire focus will be on going one better than last weekend and claiming Scotland's first international win in Argentina.

To do that, though, Blair says he wants more help from the referee. There is a lot of anger in the Scotland camp at the way that Alan Lewis, the official in the first game, appeared to allow the Pumas to come offside round the fringes of the rucks, but then gave the crucial match-turning penalty against Scotland when they did the same thing, and Blair is hoping that Alain Rolland, who takes over for the second game, will police that area more effectively.

“There were some very close calls, the referee seemed to let a fair bit go at the breakdown. It will be important how we manage Rolland. We have to have a chat with him before about what he will let go and what he will see as illegal,” Blair said. “The breakdown was an area of concern, I don't think it was anything specifically but it is about playing the referee. Once we see how he is going to play we have to react.

“We could have put more pressure on their breakdown, but saying that, when we did we got penalised, the penalty that lost us the game. We don't want to make it a 50-50 decision for the referee, we have to be accurate and not give the Argentinians the chance to spoil our ball.

“You don't know how a referee is going to handle a game. During the World Cup, they were given strict guidelines - one of them was about feeding the ball straight in the scrum but that was never done at all. You can talk about it as much as you want but it is only once the game gets going that you can see what kind of feel the referee has and react accordingly.”

All of which is far more important for Blair than any personal landmarks. “Our aim was to come out and win at least one Test,” he said. “We have put a bit more pressure on ourselves but there is a very positive mindset. We are very happy with the way that some things went, but it is about tinkering with things now to get everything right. There are things we have to work on.

“We have got these different ways of playing and it is about the key decision-makers and the whole team buying into the being able to mix the game up and making the right decision at the right time. Tactically, we kicked well at times, but we could have made more yardage in the driving lineout and we need to be more accurate in the breakdown.”

Blair is likely to be leading a side with minimal changes from the last game, with the focus on who partners him at half back - Phil Godman comes into the reckoning to replace Dan Parks, who reverted to his old style of playing back into the pocket and giving the outside backs no space to work in - and what happens in the back row, which took some of the blame for the ruck problems.

As things stand, there are still no plans to show the match live in the UK, but the Scottish Rugby Union is lobbying hard to change that, and on a weekend where Alex Salmond, the First Minister, has protested about the BBC's “metropolitan” bias and accused it of ignoring Scottish issues, the corporation must feel under pressure to find some compromise.