Skipper Mike Blair today insisted Scotland could take a leaf out of World Cup semi-finalist Argentina's book in preparing for the 2011 tournament.
After hailing a draw that has put Scotland in a group alongside these South Americans as well as England and two qualifiers Blair draw an intriguing parallel.
"What made Argentina so successful in the last world cup is that they had been together
for six or seven years and almost performed like a club team.
"This (Scotland) squad has been together for a year. Hopefully we can really push on and keep the guys together so that by the time the World Cup comes around the likes of John Barclay, Ross Rennie, Ben Cairns and Nick De Luca will all be through with a lot more international experience."
Blair said of the pairings: "It's great for the fans we've got England because that will be a real crunch game.
"Argentina are in a bit of a rebuilding phase after a very strong year last year.
"It's an ok draw for us.
"We are fairly happy with how the group ended up but you can't look too far into it at this stage.
"A lot of guys will emerge; some guys will retire.
"We don't know what will happen. The strength of the English game is very strong and a lot of guys will come through there as well" he said.
"We wanted to avoid New Zealand, Australia and South Africa which we managed to do. We wanted to miss Oceania 1 and Pool D looks like a fairly bruising group as well" said Blair in a reference to a grouping that has Wales, Australia and Fiji. with Samoa expected to join them.
Immediate priority for Blair is his Edinburgh club's Heineken European Cup clash at home to London Wasps on Friday, and speaking today at the launch of a scheme to allow students from Edinburgh, Napier, Heriot Watt and Queen Margaret Universities two-for-one entry, he said:
"It's funny going through the season; you have to switch on and switch off for different things.
"There's an Autumn Test followed by one Magner's League game then European stuff which is very much the focus at the moment and putting so much into getting this result in front of a bumper crowd. Then comes the Six Nations.
"We are relatively happy with how our Autumn Tests went without kicking on results-wise but we are heading in the right direction for the Six Nations although it's a while yet before we open against Wales who had a very impressive victory (over Australia) at the weekend."
Meanwhile, the opening match of the 2011 rugby World Cup is 33 months away.
Some 33 months ago Scotland fielded a team which contained only TWO of the starting line-up for their latest match, against Canada ten days ago.
Team v Italy, March 2006:Southwell, Paterson, Di Rollo, Henderson, S Lamont, Ross, Cusiter, Kerr, Lawson, Douglas, Hines, S Murray, White, Hogg, Taylor.
Team v Canada, November 2008:R Lamont, Webster, Cairns, De Luca, Walker, Godman, Blair, Jacobsen, Ford, E Murray, Hines, J Hamilton, Strokosch, Taylor, Barclay.
The full article contains 532 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
