SEVEN weeks ago, Scotland were international whipping boys. They had not beaten a team ranked above them for three years and nobody in the country seemed to care. Today, they are a side reborn, two wins over teams in the top five in the world and people queuing from the early hours of the morning to grab scarce tickets. The transformation has been dramatic.

“I do hope the Scottish people get a lot of pleasure from it because they’ve been starved of success,” Frank Hadden the coach who masterminded the revival, said. “I think the players have deserved it because of the way they’ve approached the game. I don’t think any of the three wins have been lucky.” And, he added, the great thing is that there should be more to come.

The wins against France and especially England were bought on the back of rock solid defence but there is an entire attacking strategy waiting to be rolled out and he knows that if they can start getting that right, then they can begin making even bigger strides.

“The effort and commitment from the guys is fantastic, it’s just oozing out of their pores,” Hadden said. “It’s about harnessing that and finding an attack that’s going to be really dangerous over the next couple of years. The training was rusty this week because we haven’t had the ball for such a long time now. Our best attacking performance was against France, but since then we’ve been denied ball and the guys get a bit edgy. They snatch at things and start forcing things because it’s not a well-oiled machine.”

Perhaps as good a demonstration as any of what can be achieved is the lineout, a complete shambles against Ireland a week ago and by Hadden’s admission the specialist coaches in charge of that area were “suicidal” when the team gathered at the start of the week.

A lot of practice, and a couple of tactical switches with more cut-down lineouts and less confusing switching of positions, and a week later the old Scotland poise at the set-piece was back. Or at least it was for most of the game.

It took a bit of a wobble midway through the second half, but luckily for Scotland, Scott Murray was hauled off with a cut head and Alastair Kellock, who had been sitting in the stand analysing where the problems had been creeping in, came on and sorted everything.

Which is the other real advance that Scotland have made. Suddenly, even the great servants to the sport are no longer sure of their places.

In the end, the most significant part will be the rediscovery of the Scottish fighting spirit. “We’ve got everybody busting a gut for one another in the squad,” Hadden concluded.