Australian revival is good news for rugby - and Scotland match will be better for it

They have beaten England after being well behind in the early stages and last week ran up the sort of score against Wales that in other years would have had anyone reading the score in an evening paper to have thought it a misprint. So we can't doubt that their coach Joe Schmidt has still the golden touch he had in his Ireland days.

Actually the Australian revival is welcome and not only because the game of rugby is the better for it. If Australia had come north with as poor a team as they seemed to have only a few months ago, a Scottish victory would have told us nothing of much value about our performance and standing, nothing about our readiness for the Six Nations which are, for us anyway, much more important than the November internationals.

Looking back, the South African game was both encouraging and disappointing. We played with commitment, power and intelligence. For more than an hour we matched the Springboks up-front, and that is rare. The forwards were both tremendous and skillful, and indeed the quality dropped only a little when replacements came on. Yet we failed to cross the try-line. This was as surprising as it was disappointing, surprising because in recent years we have rarely failed to score tries, often spectacular ones. We did, admittedly cross the line only to have the well-worked try disallowed after the referee had given it and the conversion had been kicked, after which came a TMO intervention, concerning a barely visible knock-on which had seemed to have had no effect on the run of play. But we also missed opportunities by throwing out wild passes or knocking the ball on a yard from the try-line. Of course credit for the failure to score tries must go to the quality of the Springbok defence; they don't give away many.

Australia pose a different problem. They have scored brilliant tries at Twickenham and in Cardiff, though many have been made possible by an ill-organised and sometimes witless defence. On the other hand their own defence has been full of holes, England scored freely against them, especially in the first half and Wales, though overpowered and outpaced nevertheless scored a couple.

Australia won at Twickenham because of some individual brilliance and some ill-organised English defence. One should add that the Australian set-scrum is not now the weak thing it has so often been in recent years. Yet, given Scotland's ability to match the Springbok one for long periods of the game, there is no reason to think they won't be able to hold their own, and even a bit more than that, on Sunday.

It should be an entertaining game, weather permitting, since both teams will be eager to play attacking rugby. Kicking will have to be accurate, since both can be lethal on the counter-attack and are capable of scoring tries from deep. Victory may well go to the side that makes fewer mistakes; nothing unusual in that of course.

This hasn't been a brilliant November for the Northern Hemisphere and a fair number of matches have been of indifferent quality. Indeed the only truly outstanding one has been the France-New Zealand game in Paris - intense, skillful and imaginative. If the French can play in such style in the Spring they must have a chance of a Slam - given that they don't have to come to Murrayfield. England are improving but the habit of losing close games is hard to shake off, as we have often learned. Steve Borthwick complains that players have come to these Autumn games short of fitness.

Ireland have seemed strangely out of sorts, giving away an unaccustomed number of penalties, unusually a sign that a team is thinking and moving too slowly. Yet they remain formidable, though perhaps too dependent on scrum-half Jamison Gibson-Park retaining fit and in form.

As for Wales, I found myself feeling sorry for them last Sunday, a sentiment for which I was quickly rebuked and told to bear in mind how often Wales and their supporters had queened it over us. Fair comment, I suppose. Nevertheless it's sad to see Welsh Rugby in such poor condition. They can hardly be looking forward to meeting the Springboks now. When almost a lifetime ago - November 1951 actually - South Africa came to Murrayfield and won 44-0 that was an unprecedented score. What would be an equivalent one to day? I can hardly bring myself to suggest an answer.