Mark Bennett wants to recapture the sheer exhilaration of the moment when 80,000 people were screaming at him but all he could hear was team-mate Sean Maitland.
Those crazy moments when Bennett scored the go-ahead try in the dying minutes of the Rugby World Cup quarter-final against Australia are “almost indescribable” but he desperately wants that feeling again in the future, hopefully against England in front of a home crowd in the Six Nations tomorrow.
The 23-year-old centre is fit after a shoulder injury scare to take his place in the centre as one of a young Scotland side’s premier attacking threats, and naturally he recalls his last time in the national shirt, when his try put Scotland 34-32 ahead against the Wallabies only for the triumph to be snatched from the Scots in controversial fashion in the dying seconds.
“It was crazy,” he grinned. “I got that ball and the first thing going through my head was `don’t drop it!’
“And then there was all the noise, the place was going wild, and through all that the only thing I could hear was Sean screaming up behind me going mental!
“It was a weird sensation. The crowd just felt like background noise and all I could hear was Sean, just screaming and whooping and shouting.
“I would love for that to happen again. I don’t think I can explain it that well but if I can get that feeling again it would be fantastic.”
First Bennett had to get fit again, and after graduated contact he returned to full training on Monday, but he hadn’t even thought about the Six Nations when it occurred.
“It was just bloody sore at the time,” he laughed when told he looked worried on going off the pitch. “I was not thinking any further than that at the time.
“The specialist told me straight away that it was just a case of rest, the recovery came on a lot quicker than I thought after how sore I was after the game.
“I knew it was positive or I wouldn’t have pushed myself to get to the place I needed to be. In the end it was maybe a good time for a rest, it had been pretty full-on since the start of the World Cup.”
England will however want to test that shoulder quickly, and Bennett knows what’s coming.
“That is part of the game. and I don’t see why they wouldn’t come at me,” he continued. “I am one of the smallest guys in the team, it is just physics.
“I’ve played against Jonathan Joseph a few times already, for Scotland and for Glasgow, and it’s usually been a good game. He’s like me in that he likes to use his feet and take on defenders.”
Despite the eventual crushing disappointment of the World Cup, Bennett feels that Scotland are now “in a good place”.
“Even in the last Six Nations, we didn’t get the results, but the performances were there or thereabouts and now we just have to use the momentum and push on for better results this year,” he said.
England, however, are something of an unknown quantity.
“It’s a completely new set up so, if we are being honest, we don’t know what they are going to throw at us,” he said.
“They could stick with a lot of what they know or they could change everything. We’ve done analysis of Saracens and Bath so we know roughly what to expect, but we have to be ready to react to anything.”