What Scotland must do to be taken seriously, according to record-breaking centre

Huw Jones, the Scotland centre, has admitted that the national team need to start beating teams like Australia if “they want to be taken seriously”.

Gregor Townsend’s side will square up to the Wallabies on Sunday in the Scots’ final match of the Autumn Nations Series. They have beaten Fiji and Portugal so far but lost to world champions South Africa and the general consensus is that a victory over the Aussies at Murrayfield is needed for the November Test series to be considered a success.

Scotland have not beaten one of the southern hemisphere’s traditional big three since defeating Australia 15-13 in Edinburgh in 2021. They lost 32-15 to South Africa a fortnight ago and have not enjoyed a win over the Springboks since 2010. They have never beaten New Zealand.

Huw Jones is now Scotland's top try-scoring centre of all time. | SNS Group

“Looking at the games coming in, we knew obviously the South Africa and Australia games would be the big challenges,” said Jones, who became’s Scotland highest try-scoring centre of all time with a double against Fiji which took his tally to 19, two ahead of Alan Tait. “We obviously have aspirations to be successful as a team, and we have to be winning the games against the top seven teams in the world.

“Those are games that we have to start winning now if we really want to be taken seriously I suppose. It's all well and good beating Fiji and Portugal and winning our games on the summer tour, but we want to take strides. The South Africa game was disappointing, but we've got to nail it this weekend against Australia.”

Scotland enjoyed spells of dominance against the Springboks in the second half but were unable to breach their try-line. The match with Australia is expected to be more open, with both teams inclined to play an expansive game.

The Wallabies are halfway through their four-Test tour and have been highly impressive, beating England and Wales and confounding critics who had questioned how competitive they would be after a difficult couple of seasons which included an unhappy stint under Eddie Jones.

Joe Schmidt has steadied the ship and has them playing an exciting brand of rugby, racking up the tries against both England (five) and Wales (eight).

Scotland's Huw Jones scores the first of his two tries against Fiji. | SNS Group / SRU

“They've scored a lot of tries and I think they've got threats everywhere,” said Jones. “You see the way their forwards are carrying, you see what their backs are doing. I think it's an exciting challenge. Hopefully, weather dependent, it'll be an open game.

“Obviously we'd hope to imprint our game onto them and everything we plan for and our defence we see now as quite a strength of ours.

“So knowing that they're coming with their running game, that's a big challenge that we're looking forward to. But again, obviously with our attack, we want to impose that on the game as well.”

Jones has missed the last two meetings with Australia which were both close affairs. Scotland won 15-13 in 2021 thanks to tries from Hamish Watson and Ewan Ashman but lost 16-15 a year later when Blair Kinghorn’s last-gasp penalty was off target. The centre did play in 2017 when the Scots recorded a record 53-24 win over the Aussies, scoring one of eight tries for the home side that afternoon. Jones will be hoping for a repeat on Sunday.