Ali Price admitted he was close to tears at captaining Scotland for the first time after a convincing opening win over Tonga at BT Murrayfield.
Lions scrum-half Price was named co-captain alongside Jamie Ritchie, and under their leadership Scotland ran in ten tries in a 60-14 success including four for Kyle Steyn to make a dream start to the Autumn Nations Series.
And for Price, taking on the leadership role in the absence of Stuart Hogg, it clearly meant a lot to captain the team.
He said: “It was pretty special, almost a tear in the eye. When I was stood there and realising what was about to happen, you dream of playing for your country, you don’t really dream of being captain but to get that honour and be leading the boys out, it was massive. I’m glad we were on the winning end.”
With eight players handed their debut, including try-scorers Rufus McLean, who crossed twice, and Pierre Schoeman, Scotland had a new feel to them.
But there was no lack of cohesion with six tries on the board before half-time including three for Steyn.
They added four more after the break, and while Price admitted not everything was perfect, overall it was a fine first showing and a good way of building on the momentum of the Guinness Six Nations when Scotland won both at Twickenham and in Paris for the first time in more than two decades.
He added: “It was pretty pleasing, our set-piece functioned really well for a first runout of the season. We scored some good tries off the back of that. There are a few areas to improve, our discipline – on another day letting teams have that many penalties against you could hurt you but for a first runout it was pretty clinical.
“Every game is different. The last game we played as a team was over in Paris against France. We had clips of that this week and we want to start this new year building on those kind of performances. We ground it out over in France, this was slightly different but everyone has got to do their job to the best of their ability. It was a good start.”
