A Scotland win crafted by cool heads, defence and fiery spirit

"FUNNY old world", said Margaret Thatcher, when she was dislodged 20 years ago this week. Andy Robinson might echo her words, but with a smile on his face rather than a tear in his eye.

• Scotland centre Graeme Morrison tries to evade the clutches of Zane Kirchner

It says much for him, his fellow coaches and for the resolution of his squad that they recovered from that 49-3 drubbing at the hands of the All Blacks to defeat South Africa, still the titular world champions, on Saturday. This was, one should add, a more impressive win than the defeat of Australia a year ago, because there was no element of good fortune in it.

Some say the weather conditions were in our favour, as if the Springboks never play in wind and rain. Now it is true that some of our most satisfying victories in recent years - notably against England in 2000 and 2008 - have been on vile afternoons. Yet I don't think the weather determined the result on Saturday. Sticking my neck out, I reckon we would have won whatever the conditions, partly because we evidently wanted it more and partly because South Africa look an unhappy team.

Others moan about our continued failure to score tries. In general they have a point. You are unlikely to win consistently against good teams if you can't score two or three tries a match. Nevertheless, without scoring tries, we have beaten Australia, Argentina and South Africa, and drawn with England, in the last 12 months. Defence wins matches is an old adage, and even with the present interpretation of the tackle law giving more opportunities to the side in possession, there's a lot of truth in it. South Africa won the 2007 RWC final without scoring a try. In 2003 England scored only one try in the final, and none in the semi-final against France - and were crowned champions.

In my Saturday column I wrote that South Africa were a sort of super-Argentina and hinted that we might beat them by playing as we did in Argentina in the summer. The Springboks and the Pumas are both very good defensively and make try-scoring difficult. Those critics who complain about Scotland's inability to cross the South African line may not have watched the France-Argentina game at Montpellier later on Saturday evening. It was raining there too, and the score was France 15 Argentina 9. For France, Morgan Parra kicked four penalties and Damien Traille dropped a goal. Very like Murrayfield, and the French scarcely ever came close to scoring a try. Yet their back division was composed of Parra, the best scrum-half in the northern hemisphere, proven try scorers in Traille, Yannick Jauzion and Aurelien Rougerie, two fast and elusive wings in Andreu and Huget, and the richly-talented Alexis Palisson at full-back. The French press has levelled the same accusation at them that some of the contributors to our website have aimed at Andy Robinson's side: "they displayed a peculiar sterility in attack".At both Murrayfield and Montpellier defence and the conditions contrived to blunt any aggressive intent.

That said, on a couple of occasions it was a failure to react sufficiently quickly to opportunities that cost us the chance of scoring a try. When Sean Lamont burst through in what looked like a beautifully planned and executed training ground move as the ball was flipped into his hands from a line-out, Graeme Morrison, who otherwise had an excellent game, seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second and so was neither at his shoulder for an off-load nor quite quick enough to the breakdown. Then in the second half when Richie Vernon made that storming 30-yard break up the middle of the field, he found no one in close support. If Vernon had been an All Black he would surely have found a man on either side calling for the pass. In both cases it seemed to be slow thinking rather than lack of speed of foot that let us down.

It was of course a day for the forwards, tirelessly and intelligently prodded and prompted by Rory Lawson, and the Scottish pack was magnificent. When Allan Jacobsen first played for Scotland he looked like someone who would do until a better loose-head was found. Now he must be one of the first names on the team-sheet, a worthy successor to David Sole and Tom Smith. As for young Richie Gray, there are only two reasons to eschew superlatives. First, he is really only in his first season of international rugby, and everyone knows that the second season is the real test. Second, if one uses up superlatives today, what will one find to say when the boy has become a man?

Scotland played with a fiery spirit and cool heads. No head was cooler than Hugo Southwell's as he waited and waited and waited for that Springbok kick-through to trickle over the goal-line to allow him to touch it down for a 22 drop-out. That took real nerve and fine judgement. A less confident full-back would have hacked it into touch giving South Africa a five-metre line-out. In retrospect this was perhaps the one moment when the match might have been lost - and Southwell saved it.

So to Pittodrie and Samoa, a match that will be equally hard and one that will make very different demands. Samoa are arguably the greatest rugby-playing nation in the world, yet the 70,000-strong crowd who watched them run England close at Twickenham is only 100,000 fewer than the Samoan population. We will have to win on Saturday without wearing our favourite "underdogs" tag.