Bullish captain Sione Tuipulotu insisted Scotland always knew they would end Australia’s autumn resurgence after they cruised to a 27-13 triumph over the nation of his birth.
The Wallabies arrived in Edinburgh buoyed by wins over England and Wales this month, but they were brought crashing back to earth at Murrayfield by an experienced home side who went up through the gears in a dominant second half.
Australia-born Tuipulotu scored the first of the Scots’ four tries before the break, with Duhan van der Merwe, Josh Bayliss and Finn Russell crossing the whitewash after the break as the hosts eased into a commanding 27-6 lead before Harry Potter’s late consolation for the visitors.
“The feeling throughout the week is we were pretty confident that we’re a better team than this Wallabies team,” he said. “I’m not too sure if it’s an upset, or how the media views it, but we were very confident that we were going to be the better team today.
“It’s a good win, but I don’t think it’s the best win or anything. The way we themed the week is we didn’t really feel like they had played a defensive team like us, and we also didn’t feel like they had played an attacking team like us.
“We were very confident during the week. We knew they were going to come in with confidence as well, but we knew once we got into the game that we could make them feel pretty uncomfortable, with our defence especially.”
Tuipulotu felt Scotland let Australia off the hook and should have won more convincingly as they ended their autumn campaign with three wins and a spirited defeat by South Africa from their four Tests.
“I think the scary thing for this group is that that’s probably just a six or seven out of ten performance against a pretty good team,” he said. “It’s just about cleaning up the little bit, the few errors that we had in that game.
“I actually think that scoreline can be a lot bigger. We made a lot of errors on our set-piece and stuff like that when we were clean through.
“If we can clean up those things and be a bit more ruthless with our set-piece in the finish zone – we had a couple of lineouts that we lost there – we’re a pretty dangerous team.”
The afternoon was “super special” for Tuipulotu as his 77-year-old Greenock-born grandmother Jaqueline Thomson – the woman by whom he is eligible for Scotland – was in the stand watching him play for his adopted nation for the first time. She then presented the Hopetoun Cup – the trophy for defeating the Aussies – to him after the match.
“I don’t really score many tries, so that one was pretty special to score while my grandma was here and knowing how much she also wanted to beat Australia,” he said.
“I feel really blessed just because of this all happening and not just for me. I’m a little bit emotional about the fact that her life’s just gone full circle and now she gets to sit in the stand and get some recognition.
“It makes me so happy, genuinely. I’m really stoked with how this week’s gone.”
Tuipulotu was on the receiving end of a ferocious tackle from Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii that resulted in the Wallabies’ burgeoning rugby league convert having to go off injured after just 31 minutes.
“To be honest, I didn’t really know it was him that hit me because it felt humongous,” he laughed. “When I popped up, I was just kind of looking around at who it was and then I saw that he was on the ground, so I said something to him and then he went off the pitch.”
