An improving Australia side will arrive in Murrayfield having stunned England and hammered Wales so far this autumn, and Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend is not surprised at the Wallabies’ improvements under former Ireland boss Joe Schmidt.
Former Ireland boss Schmidt replaced Eddie Jones, whose disastrous tenure ended when Australia failed to qualify the knockout stages of the World Cup for the first time in France last year.
Schmidt, who previously worked as an assistant with the All Blacks, has restored pride in the Wallabies jersey and introduced some potential stars of the future into the set-up.
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Townsend, whose side warmed up for their autumn finale with a 59-21 win over Portugal, gave his verdict on next week’s visitors to Scottish Gas Murrayfield.
"They've improved,” the Scotland head coach said.
"Joe Schmidt, who's a brilliant coach, has spent time with them now and they have some really good players.
“They may have gone through a little dip but they've got all their squad available and they've even been able to make changes in the back of England and bring in guys like [Will] Skelton and could make them stronger going into the game. It's going to be a very tough game.”
One player Scotland will have to do their homework on is rugby league convert Joseph Sua'ali'i, who was outstanding on his debut against England last weekend – his first senior professional match in the 15-a-side code.
Whether the 21-year-old features from the start – as he did in London, or off the bench as in Cardiff – he looks a special talent.
"For your first game of union, it's a |Test match at Twickenham, and you're able to offload lovely soft touches and he'll take a lot of confidence out of that and I just really know they've got a world-class footballer already.
“But if he doesn't play then we'll have our hands full with [Len] Ikitau and the quality players they're able to select.”
The Scotland head coach is likely to revert largely to the side that faced the Springboks for the series finale against Australia, with only Jack Dempsey ruled out of the match with a shoulder injury.
Josh Bayliss did his chances no harm with an industrious showing against Portugal.
Townsend added: “Matt Ferguson obviously has been able to play number 8 and played really well for us at number eight, but I thought Josh did everything that you wanted him to do.
"We know he can cover more than just one position in the back row but eight was what he played for us in the summer and played today so yeah, we were pleased with his performance.”
And after a stand-out campaign so far, Townsend may look to find room in the team for Bristol-bound Tom Jordan – who was named Player of the Match in the Portugal win.
However, Townsend indicated Blair Kinghorn – who was deployed on the wing against South Africa – may well get the nod in the number 15 jersey.
Townsend said: “Blair has been our starting fullback now since the World Cup and has played really well and has played very well at club level.
“He wasn't available against Fiji and we played him on the wing against South Africa because of the injuries we picked up in that position but we'll be considering Blair very strongly as fullback and hopefully giving him the opportunity to start there and build on the great season he's had at Toulouse and obviously the end of last season.”
And the Scotland boss further indicated Jordan may be an ideal candidate for the bench.
"Tom definitely comes into the mix and I think his versatility puts him in a strong position to be in our squad. Whether we go 5-3 or 6-2 he'll be competing with Adam [Hastings] for that spot on the bench lf he doesn't make the team.
“We've probably seen his versatility be more at 10 and centre with the ability to play fullback and now he's a player who can play all three positions."
Scotland's scrum malfunctioned at times against Portugal and Townsend will have decisions to make up front – primarily on the bench with Pierre Schoeman and Zander Fagerson likely to be the starters next weekend.
Will Hurd impressed on his first Murrayfield start, scoring a try in a busy display, but it was another difficult afternoon for replacements Rory Sutherland and Elliot Millar Mills as Portugal got on top in the latter stages.
But Townsend said it wasn’t all doom and gloom: "I spoke to Pieter [de Villers, Scotland scrum coach] at the time, he wasn't happy with how they were dropping the scrum under pressure as in the opposition, he felt we weren't getting the rewards.
“Then I think there was a couple of scrums where maybe we were tentative, not wanting to give away a penalty for early engage but it's frustrating.
“Obviously we want to get more out of the scrum than that, but I don't think it was always being refereed the way that we thought it should be.”
Scotland’s autumn has been very much as expected so far, with wins over a Fiji side missing their European-based stars and Portugal, but defeat to world champions South Africa. If Scotland fail to beat Schmidt’s side next weekend, it will be seen as another failure after a dismal World Cup and a poor Six Nations/
“It would be very disappointing if we were to come away with a defeat but we'll have to play really well to win,” Townsend said.
"The more I looked at the game (South Africa), the more I was impressed with a lot of aspects of what we did. The defence, the togetherness, the mental strength when we were a man down.
"There's things we can improve and finish off those opportunities but if we play at that level in every game this season we'll have a really good season.
“Against Portugal and Fiji we obviously got more opportunities to attack. Other players got to play for Scotland so there's positives to take out of those performances but we'll still look at areas to improve and we'll know we'll have to keep improving to beat the likes of Australia and our games in the Six Nations.”
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