Scotland’s euphoria from the Ireland win lasted just about 24 hours before attention turned to the serious business of securing a first win in Paris for 18 years, says captain Greig Laidlaw.
“By about Sunday afternoon we were back looking at France,” said the skipper, who sees his primary job until they returned to full-out training yesterday as keeping a cap on the squad being too pleased with their 27-22 victory to open the 2017 Six Nations.
“It started back in the changing room, all the boys are there and the first feeling is probably relief,” he said. “But those are the moments you play the game for, that euphoria and to be with your team mates after the game.
“It was a great feeling at the weekend and it’ll be great to replicate that. However delighted we were with the win, it’s only the one, no way are we getting ahead of ourselves.
“I refuse to let the group do that. We understand that the Ireland game has passed and we can only take one game at a time. That’s means it’s France now and we need another big performance to get something out of this game.”
Scotland’s win in 1999 is already writ large in legend for the astonishing five-try first half and the fact it won Scotland the last Five Nations, and Laidlaw feels that victory can inspire his team even a generation on.
“Firstly, there is a reason why no Scotland team has won there in such a long time. It’s a hard place to win for any team,” he said.
‘But the `99 team inspire us, for sure. That’s a record we want to grab for this group of players. Rather than seeing it as a burden, we go out there determined to win.
“We ended one record at the weekend, our first opening win in the Six Nations since 2006, wasn’t it? ’99 was a good few years before that, but we know what we want to do.”
Scotland felt like they might have won the last twice at the Stade de France – in the last Six Nations meeting two years ago, and the World Cup warm-up later that year – but Laidlaw thinks that under Guy Noves it’s a different French side even to those recent games.
“France are a very dangerous side and they will be disappointed with their recent form, because they haven’t been winning games.
“They’ve got a very powerful forward pack and dangerous runners out wide, so we need to play really well – and really smart – to get something out of this game.
“Vern (Cotter) certainly knows Guy Noves, which is good for us – but obviously Guy knows Vern, as well. They’ll be highly motivated this week, getting back in front of their home Crowd as they try to notch up their first win in a while.”
That crowd can turn against their favourites pretty quickly if the visitors do their job right, he added.
“‘The crowd is different from other rugby crowds, and that’s something we can use to our advantage,” he said. “That first 20 minutes, it’s very, very important for us. If you can hear the whistling from the crowd in France, you know you’re doing something right in the game.
“We are focusing on the start of the game and, although we’ll need to play for 80 minutes, hopefully we can turn the crowd against them a bit early on.”
Laidlaw believes the French will come with all their power directly at Scotland, but that they’re ready.
“They will certainly try to throw their weight around,” he continued. “We were probably under pressure a bit in the scrum for the opening part of the Ireland game, but the pleasing thing for us was that we fixed that.
“It’s a French strength, certainly, their forward power. Whether that be their driving lineouts or their scrums, they go for that a lot.
“We’re expecting that. The forward pack will deal with it. We’re confident about that.”
The danger man for France, however, is someone Laidlaw has already faced this season in the Aviva Premiership, No 8 Louis Picamoles.
“He’s a quality player, as much as got power he’s got subtle steps as well,” continued Laidlaw. “It not just his power but it’s his offloading ability as well, he gets them on the front foot, and he gave England lots of problems at the weekend.
“I played against him when Gloucester went to Northampton and he pretty much created a try out of nothing and we lost by four points.
“But we’;ve gained a bit of respect from the weekend. Someone like Guy Noves with his vast coaching experience he’ll know already not to take us lightly and I don’t think he will.
“It’s the same as always we need to worry about ourselves and get our stuff right. That’s something we talked about last week, we needed to respect Ireland and understand what they were about but we had to get our own stuff right to give ourselves a chance of winning.
“We need to harness the excitement we got out of that now, and push on.”
