New coach, new era and effectively a fresh start for a player fed up with being tagged as the most frustrating of his generation. For Johnnie Beattie, winning selection against Fiji this weekend means the chance to live up to all the expectations created around him.

By any reckoning, he is one of the most naturally gifted players to have arrived in the professional ranks in recent times, but even he admits that this has not translated into matchwinning performances nearly as often as it should. Ability has never been a problem; consistency has.

“I’ve been involved in squads for the last three or four seasons and been involved in the 35-man squads, but have had the chance to play only sporadically,” he said yesterday. “You lose the feeling that you might get that chance again, so it is great that Andy Robinson [the Scotland head coach] has given me this start and handed me this massive opportunity.”

The problem with young Beattie — son of John, the former Scotland international, now a BBC commentator — is that while he is perfectly capable of the most outrageous pieces of skill, he is also adept at being posted missing in action, once famously contributing only two tackles to a Scotland defensive performance.

“That was in the past,” the 23-year-old said. “I know I had to come in and work hard to force my way into the team. In seasons past I have been accused of being inconsistent, so it has been nice to string together a few positive performances in the early part of the season. “Last year I was not as good as I should have been and it was disappointing. I put that to one side, looked at myself over the summer and tried to rectify things and change the way I play.

“The good things about playing now is that there is so much help there within the coaching set-up. There is not a lot of soul-searching, more thinking how you can do things differently, how you can get involved more. If you tinker with things and change them, you find it works for you.”

It is actually three years since Beattie won his first cap, a scoring performance against Romania when still only 20, but a measure of how he has had coaches tearing their hair out is that, after being injured early in his second international, he has managed only two more.

Still, one man who has never lost the faith in him is Robinson, who has consistently championed the youngster’s cause, both during his previous involvements with Scotland and as Scotland A coach. The head coach was prepared even to gamble on doing without the experience of Allister Hogg to get Beattie into the side this week.

“The thing I find hardest is to stay in the game as much as possible, always be ball-carrying, always be tackling, especially if you are not in a recognised receiver position, 10, 12 or 13,” Beattie said.

“It is a challenge every game to go out and get the ball off these guys to be in the right position to receive the ball. This is my fifth season with Glasgow, I have been happy with the way things have been going and need to maintain what I have been trying to do.”