Not that we wish ill on our Celtic cousins...

Us Scots have had to grimly accept the gently triumphalist banter — before smirking discreetly behind cupped hands when Ireland got their comeuppance against Japan on Saturday

Robert Burns, the great Scottish bard, wrote: “O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us; To see oursels as ithers see us!”

Which translated into English reads: “Oh, would some power give us the gift; To see ourselves as others see us!”

The poem is about a chap in a church who notices a louse roving in the lady in front’s hair. The poet chastises the louse for not realising how important his host is, and then reflects that, to a louse, we are all equal prey, and that we would be disabused of our pretensions if we were to see ourselves through each other’s eyes.

Burns could easily have been talking about Scottish rugby this last week. We’d talked a big game going into the tournament, and when it all came crashing down round our ankles last Sunday week, we suddenly understood how foolish we had been. We were the vainglorious poser at a party who has suddenly realised that rather than being the focus of admiring glances from fellow guests, everyone is in fact laughing at us because we have strutted into the room with our zipper undone.

Yesterday’s one-sided victory over Samoa has lifted some of the gloom, but, once the initial euphoria dies down, recognition will have to be given to the fact that this was a job well done against fairly limited opposition. A team with aspirations of sitting as equals at the top table must walk the walk, not just talk the talk, when playing with the big boys.

Before Ireland, our media and fans had — to varying degrees — bought into unsubstantiated boasts about Scotland being the fittest team on the planet who would play the fastest brand of rugby, forgetting almost completely that every other team in the tournament has also spent the summer working their socks off. It is excruciating to now think that it had hardly occurred to us that a team of Ireland’s pedigree might have a few ideas of their own for blocking us from playing the candy floss rugby (lots of fluff and no real bite) championed by Gregor Townsend and his coaching team.

So, for all that Ireland’s smugness at having exposed our own smugness grated on Scotland’s already raw nerves, there was absolutely nothing we could do or say about it because they were absolutely right.

We just had to grimly accept the gently triumphalist banter — before smirking discreetly behind cupped hands when Ireland got their comeuppance against Japan on Saturday (whilst remaining mindful that we still have to play the host nation on the 13th October and there is now even less room for errors in our quest to make the quarter-finals).

It is not that we wish ill on our Celtic cousins, but continually being the poor relation is so tiresome. We still remember that run of 12 games without facing defeat against Ireland between 1989 and 1999 — and it sticks in the craw (to use a good old Scottish phrase) that those days don’t look like returning any time soon. We have to get our kicks where we can.

Besides, a little bit of schadenfreude is understandable given that there was very little to latch onto in the way of light relief in and around the Scotland camp this past week, prior to the Samoa match.

Under normal circumstances, an eight-day turnaround would be about the ideal time-frame to allow players to recover from the rigours of the first match whilst keeping the adrenalin and focus pumping into the second game. But not in this instance.

Scotland certainly needed a few days to mend their bruised egos as much as the battered bodies immediately after the Ireland game. Stuart McInally — who had missed the immediate post-match press conference with ‘severe cramp’ — cut such a lonely and dejected figure at Monday’s press briefing that genuinely concerned journalists were still asking John Barclay how the tour captain was shaping up on Friday.

There was, however, a perceptible mood change around the middle of the week, with second-row Grant Gilchrist leading the way when he spoke with heartfelt passion on Wednesday about ‘taking the bullets like men’. Fellow senior players Greig Laidlaw and Barclay — along with a few less established figures such as Chris Harris — followed suit.

The fallout on social media after the Ireland debacle was ferocious — way beyond anything previously witnessed in the genteel world Scottish rugby usually operates in — and it would take a cold heart to not to have some sympathy for the players. They are a group of decent human beings (perhaps too decent in the grizzled world of top-flight international rugby), and those who have suggested that what happened last weekend was down to a lack of commitment or desire are well wide of the mark.

However, this is a mess entirely of their own and their employers’ making. If you are going to build-up people’s expectations to unrealistic levels, then you have to be ready to accept the criticism when you fail to deliver. And a couple of shocking PR gaffes from Murrayfield fanned the flames.

On Tuesday, when the wounds were still raw, the SRU announced as ‘breaking news’ that a refurbishment of the conference and matchday suites at Murrayfield had been completed.

This was no time for smug corporate grandstanding.

Worse still, on Wednesday, they announced that a new ‘independent commentator’ had given his assessment of the game on the SRU website. This analysis by a former sports editor of a national newspaper was to the effect that it was really the fans’ own fault that they had been left disappointing because their expectations had been too high.

That prompted a predictably incredulous reaction. It would be funny if it all hadn’t bounced back on the already under pressure team.

The good news for Scotland is that they have lived through what is almost certainly the toughest week of their rugby careers, and if it has taught them a few lessons about not believing their own hype then that will stand them in good stead for the remainder of this World Cup pool campaign — in which the prospect of making the quarter-finals is still very much alive and kicking.