THE choice of phrase he used to describe it, but the satisfaction Mike Blair expressed on behalf of the Scotland camp as he anticipated facing a full strength All Black side was understandable in the context of his experience.

The scrum-half was a fine player who captained his country and generated such respect on an individual level that he was once nominated for World Rugby player of the year, in spite of the fact that the Scotland team were perennial strugglers throughout his career.

Little said more about their status than the attitude towards them of the All Blacks and their administrators, a string of 50 point plus thrashings through the 1990s and into Millennium year reducing Scotland’s drawing power to such an extent that they have not toured New Zealand since 2000, while over the past decade visits to Murrayfield have been seen not so much as Tests as opportunities for the world’s No 1 side to blood new players.

Even in doing so they still repeatedly won against the teams in which Blair played, so he clearly viewed it as a mark of renewed respect that the only change made to the All Black side which beat France last weekend was enforced.

“I think it’s great for Scottish rugby and particularly great for the players. They get to face the best team, a lot of the best individuals in the world and it’s great for our crowd, to get to see them,” he said. “It’s also a fantastic opportunity to mark ourselves up against them. To see exactly where we are. We’ve had some fantastic results, beating Australia in the summer obviously but we’re chuffed to bits with the team they’ve put out.”

Chuffed to bits… Whether he still feels that way at the end of the 80 minutes remains to be seen, not least because there is a sense of history repeating itself in attempting to impose a rugby philosophy that seems inspired by All Black rugby to beat the All Blacks.

The situation is reminiscent of the golden age of Scottish rugby when Scotland’s forward play was largely dictated by Jim Telfer who was a great advocate of a Kiwi-style rucking game.

Teams of that era came close to making it work against the All Blacks, most notably in the drawn Test at Murrayfield in 1983 and in Auckland when they were controversially edged out by three points in 1990, but the pupil never quite got the better of the master.

Gregor Townsend’s declared determination to get his men to play the fastest rugby in the game smacks of similarly following in All Black footsteps and Blair acknowledged that the Scots cannot afford to be predictably one-dimensional.

“New Zealand play a fast game as well and there’s a balance,” he said. “You can’t play the fastest tempo rugby in the world the whole time. We feel we’ve got a squad capable of playing that type of rugby and other types if required.”

There is a real sense, then, that the Scots should be feeling much better about themselves in being seen as good enough to merit facing the world’s best, but there is an obvious potential down-side to that, as centre Alex Dunbar acknowledged yesterday, when saying: “We’ve got to go out there and put them under pressure. If any team sits off and lets them play then anyone can be beaten by 60-70 points.”

He was saying so in response to a reported prediction of that sort of scoreline from former All Black Zinzan Brooke, but Dunbar was part of the team that ran the tourists close three years ago at what was something of a turning point for this group.

“There’s probably half a dozen guys from 2013-14 who now have 30 to 40 caps so there’s a lot of experience within the group,” he observed. “On that day we started well and put them under pressure. We will take a bit of learning out of that. You can’t sit off these teams and let them play; if you do that they can carve you up and score a lot of points.”

“You’ve got to concentrate on each play as it happens, focus on what is happening there and then,” he said.”We will be focusing on starting well and putting them under pressure.”