If you’re Scottish, and most understand this after Thursday night at Hampden, you do tend to go around looking for omens or portents of doom.
Scotland’s training base for their Rugby World Cup matches here in Newcastle has been the Royal Grammar School in the leafy Jesmond suburb of the city, and media activities have been conducted in the school’s small but lavishly equipped theatre.
The last production staged there? Why, Les Miserables, of course.
Truth told, this should be no portent at all for Scotland’s final pool match in the tournament against Samoa today at St James’ Park. For two and a half years since the draw was made, we’ve been nervy that this would be a winner-take-all play-off for the quarter-final.
It turns out, it’s not. Scotland have stayed on schedule and need to win to reach the last eight, the Samoans have not. They have nothing to play for but their considerable pride, or perhaps some Pacific Rim solidarity with the Japanese who stand to benefit if they can beat the Scots.
Given the Samoans’ occasional disorganisation, their regular infighting with officialdom – mainfesting itself in the tweet of the squad on the way to England 2015 stretched out over a departure lounge complaining their officials were going business class – and a failure to adapt to new, more stringent rules around tackling and hitting as the game seeks to protect players from concussions, it’s fair conjecture to suppose their hearts might not quite be in this game.
Scotland, on the other hand, prefer to assume what they will get is not the indisciplined rabble well beaten by Japan last week but the dangerous, skilful and motivated team that beat them in Kings Park, Durban two years ago, when Alesandro Tuilagi scored two tries and the Samoans bullied a not-quite-full-strength Scottish team.
Tuilagi, rightly or wrongly, is not playing this afternoon, but even that means nothing to the Scots, who, despite this now being the real business end of the tournament, have not changed their approach, according to assistant coach Duncan Hodge.
“No, I don’t think there has been a change of mood,” he said, to the suggestion that what was effectively the first knockout game had changed the attitude. “You’ve probably listened to us as coaches and the players saying it was one game at a time, and that genuinely was the case.
“You can’t get too far ahead of yourself in this tournament, and it’s simply because we didn’t perform as we wanted to last Saturday (against South Africa) and we’ve got to try and rectify that now.
“We accept it’s a big game, but we’ve prepped the same way we did for the first three – and we’re looking to just be composed. We know what we’re about and we’ve got to perform on Saturday.”
South Africa played like the welcoming committee in Cape Town would be armed with tomatoes to throw at them if they failed, but that has not been the reason the Scots have struggled to get the pace of the last two games in particular early on.
“With every game of international rugby you set your stuff out, but it doesn’t always pan out like that,” he said. “Possibly in those two games we haven’t adapted. Twenty minutes in against South Africa we hadn’t had any ball, we still kicked a couple we had away. We should have recognised the problems and solved the issues on field – international rugby’s a tough place and we have to adapt slightly quicker.”
Samoa meanwhile, have plenty of game-changing quality, he added.
“We know that they will be physical. Some of their set-piece work has been good, they have proven try-scorers out there. Tim Nanai-Williams at the back is an exceptional player, (scrum-half) Kahn Fotuali’i is a great player as well.
“We have stuff in place to counter that. We have to impose our game as well, last week we probably lost out physically upfront. If you don’t front up against team you’re likely to finish second best, and that’s certainly true of Samoa.”
When stripped down, however, this match should be about Scotland; a stranglehold at the setpiece, with the all Edinburgh front row dominating scrummage, and lineout supremacy through Richie Gray. They can deny Samoa the ball and force territory for the returning Finn Russell to orchestrate against a team with outside defenders who will fly up looking for hits, potentially leaving gaps.
There’s no reason why, other than silly national stereotypes, we should be thinking of anything other than a solid Scottish win today. A quarter-final place is the absolute minimum this team should be achieving.