SCOTLAND captain John Barclay warned his team before its Australia match-up that the side would need to step up a level.
Gregor Townsend began his reign as the Dark Blues’ head coach with a 34-13 victory over Italy in Singapore last weekend, but expected a much tougher test of their credentials at the Allianz Stadium in Sydney today.
There were some moments of magic against the Italians, including four tries in a 10-minute spell, but Barclay wanted them to raise their game in many other areas.
“We have to get better across the board really,” he said, as the team were wrapping up their final preparations yesterday.
“We did some okay things, some good things last week, though it is hard to analyse the game too much because the conditions were unique.
“We need to look after the ball a lot better and, defensively, Australia will pose a much bigger challenge because they move the ball very well and have got skillful players.
“We will have to be a lot more astute, a lot more switched on and a lot more physical to deal with them.
“They play a bit differently to Northern Hemisphere teams. They run from everywhere, that is the way they play rugby over here. It must be fun to play, but it presents a challenge for us to try to stop them.
“[Australia coach] Michael Cheika did that when he was in charge at Leinster and you can see the influence he had there — they play a very similar brand.”
The previous two matches between Australia and Scotland had both seen the Scots score three tries but lose by a single point.
With that record, Barclay said they could be confident of scoring but warned the big improvements would have to come in defence against a side of natural ball-handlers.
“You can see the lifestyle — it is all outdoors, there are so many sports people can play, league, AFL, union,” said Barclay.
“That helps with the way they played the game. They are all very comfortable ball-in-hand.
“The ball will be fast so we are going to try to slow it down — every team does. If you look at the game in the autumn, then we did that very well, we turned them over a lot, but it is a big challenge.”
Scotland have most of their frontline forwards available at the moment, but are missing many of their backs through either injury or British and Irish Lions selection.
“This is a big step up, this is the big league. We are playing in Australia’s backyard and it will be pretty busy against one of the top teams in the world. We understand how big the challenge is,” Barclay said prior to today’s game.
Australia, however, had dismissed any suggestions of an easy win for their side.
“That perception is a couple of years old,” said backs coach Stephen Larkham.
“They have played some really good football, they have scared us over the last couple of years. They won three out of five in the Six Nations and beat Italy last week by a good margin.”
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