Sione Tuipulotu has revealed that he told Darcy Graham that he was going to light up Murrayfield as Scotland stepped onto the field ahead of facing Fiji. 

Graham produced a virtuoso display as he scored four tries as Scotland beat Fiji 57-17 in their first Autumn Nations Series test. It was Graham’s first tries for Scotland in over a year since the demolition of Romania at the World Cup in France. 

It was also a special evening for Tuipulotu as he led out his country for the first time,  and the Glasgow Warriors told Graham pre-match that Murrayfield would be his "playground".  

“Yeah, I'm super happy for him,” the new captain said. “Gregor usually does the last message when we rock up to Murrayfield and we huddle up.

"I walked onto the field with Darcy and the pitch felt pretty good, and I told him, this is your playground because usually every time we play at Murrayfield, Darcy's going crazy.

"He went crazy again today, so Darcy's always a top performer for us, and I was super happy for him to start well in this Autumn Nations.”

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Tuipulotu was installed as permanent Scotland captain for the Autumn Nations Series and his mum, Angelina, flew in from Australia to watch her son. 

The 27-year-old even noticed his mum on the big screens on a proud day for the Tuipulotu family. 

“Yeah, I just saw her out there with Lara and TJ as well.” Tuipulotu added.

“That was pretty cool. She was obviously at the World Cup, but she said that was a much better experience than the World Cup, just the atmosphere, but obviously some of the results as well. Even after the game, I saw her up on the big screen, so it was awesome.”

Scotland secured a record win over Fiji without being at their best as they allowed the visitors to fight back into the game after a dominant start. 

Tuipulotu provided his verdict: “I did say in the huddle pre-game how important those first 20 minutes were going to be, especially against Fiji, because they were going to come out after their war dance and stuff like that with their tails up. 

“I thought particularly the forward pack really stood up in that first 20 but I think our discipline between 20 and 40 minutes let us down and we had to do a lot of defending in our own 30.

"I thought we probably had to make an unnecessary amount of tackles, and that kind of drained us a little bit. Maybe that led to some ill-discipline from there, just from us both being tired in our own 30.

"We'll look at that and see how we can improve that for next week.”