As second comings go, it went relatively smoothly. Five years and a day after Andy Robinson opened his England account with a 70-0 drubbing of Canada at Twickenham, his new team scored an efficient, no-frills win over the team who started the day one place above them in the world rankings.
It was a shame fewer than 22,000 turned out for the start of the new era, but things will get more interesting, and a lot tougher, for Scotland's new coach when Australia arrive on Saturday, followed closely by Argentina. Robinson reckons it will take a 15 per cent improvement to beat the Australians: "There's a really interesting feeling here. We have beaten a quality opposition comfortably. We should have a smile on our faces."
The Fijians could have been a tougher nut to crack – five first choices were not available to coach Glen Ella – but their party still had a fair smattering of those who effectively ejected Wales from the last World Cup, in France. So Robinson's Scotland did a decent job locking them out for large tracts of the game until the coach disrupted things by clearing his replacements' bench.
From the moment the stadium stood to welcome his team, Robinson might have guessed he was on to a winner. He was not tempted to join in with Flower Of Scotland, and the coaches' box briefly shuddered when Scotland gave away a couple of silly penalties, but nerves settled a little when Phil Godman banged over a penalty from 43 metres out, wide on the left, after 14 minutes.
Scottish pressure was starting to pay dividends and the first try of the new era was not far off. Fittingly, it was created by the new captain. Chris Cusiter, starting his first Test since the 2007 World Cup and very much the livewire of the first quarter, caught everyone bar Johnnie Beattie napping when he cut through the line-out in the 21st minute. The scrum-half might have gone on himself, but, after 20 metres, he off-loaded to the Glasgow No 8 and, despite the attention of three Fijians, Scotland scored and the show was on the road.
Rory Lamont got to within a metre of a second try, Godman kicked his second penalty when the Fiji pack went backwards at a rate of knots and a beam of sunshine even raked the upper tier of the East Stand. Another Godman penalty made the lead 16 points just before half-time, when Fiji finally became unpredictable and scored. After being knocked back time and time again, the Saracens scrum-half Mosese Rauluni dipped into his bag of tricks, ran a penalty from under the Scotland posts and Vereniki Goneva found himself free on the left.
Nicky Little's conversion cut the lead to nine points, but, 11 minutes into the second half, Scottish forwards reasserted themselves. They looked like heaving the Fiji scrum back over their own line before Cusiter fed Godman and Graeme Morrison, with the help of a sizeable nudge forward from Sean Lamont, sidestepped his way under the posts to make the kick simple. "The pass was as flat as it could have been," said Morrison, before Ella suggested there could have been a forward pass as well as a knock-on.
The only cloud over Robinson's day came when Cusiter's replacement, Mike Blair, limped off with an ankle injury three minutes from time.
