THE new and old Scotland put on a show at Murrayfield yesterday and it was at the same time both thrilling and terrifying to watch.

It wasn’t so long ago when watching our brave lads was a tiresome chore because, well, they couldn’t score tries. That has changed, by quite some way, and they ran six in against Samoa when a few years back scoring as many over an entire Six Nations campaign felt an impossibility.

Alas, some of the old problems, which we hoped had been if not banished then certainly reduced, came back with one hell of a vengeance on the strangest of afternoons.

Samoa, or skint Samoa if you are into alliteration, scored five tries to make it a six-point game in the end. When Scotland for the umpteenth time coughed up possession, deep in Samoa territory as well, I could hardly have been the only one who felt the visitors had it in them to power their way up the park for a win.

Oh, Scotland.

When the final whistle confirmed their victory, the mind immediately turned to next Saturday and the All Blacks. If Samoa, ranked 16th, can score 38 points and get over the white line on five occasions at Murrayfield, what will the world champions do?

The mind boggles.

Every time Scotland did something good, they almost immediately made an error.

Their defending at times was dreadful. So many tackles were missed, and men were not tracked. When the Scots had possession, the old habit of simple handling mistakes and throwing passes which were never on returned from nowhere.

Samoa won too much turnover ball, Scotland made errors with ball in hand, with the boot and on the ground. And they conceded penalty after penalty.

Ah, but at least they have Stuart Hogg, a player with a God-given ability to get a full Murrayfield on its feet by weaving his way through the opposition with the predictability of a Donald Trump text.

Once upon a time it was Andy Irvine who could bring the dullest game to life as he took a high ball out of the Edinburgh sky, dipped a shoulder to get past his first man before embarking on a mazy run so jaw-dropping that even Bill McLaren would run out of adjectives.

Then came Gavin Hastings, the next No15 who with ball in hand was responsible for considerably raising the decibels.

And now the superstar is Hogg, Scotland’s talisman, and at 25-years-old a rugby player who can be considered an all-time great for his country. The lad is box office and whenever he had the ball, Murrayfield rose as one.

Scotland play 15-man rugby. It’s just that the man with that number on his back can, at times, appear to be a level above the rest.

It’s the way he runs, with such intent and swagger, those feet of his skipping along the turf as he looked to beat a man, every time and, when taken down, such a travesty is met with shock as if nobody can quite believe he has scored or set-up a try.

Irvine was the same. He was always going to attempt the run, dummy or pass which nobody else would even consider. Today’s full-back is comparable to that incredible entertainer of the 1970’s and 1980’s. In Scottish rugby terms there is no greater compliment.

With 90 seconds gone, Hogg chased a kick by Tommy Seymour, the ball bounced over his opposite number, Ah See Tuala, and the Hawick man with his very first touch scored the 17th try of an already astonishing international career.

And it was Hogg who missed a team-mate with his pass to Huw Jones later in the first-half, the correct decision, which presented the big centre to get past two Samoans for his try.

A superb second-half run through midfield, no Samoan could lay a finger on the Glasgow Warriors man, only came to nothing because of a poor decision by the referee who saw an obstruction nobody else did.

Hogg beat a player almost every time. It was hardly his fault the support when it came wasn’t good enough.

The pre-match highlights reel shown on the giant Murrayfield screens were of recent Scotland tries, some of which bordered on the spectacular, and over half were scored or at least involved Hogg.

Scotland won this match because they are better than Samoa, have players such as Hogg who are a class apart, and home advantage.

But, sheesh, Townsend and his coaching team have a lot of work to do before New Zealand.

The hope is that the good players who were bad to average don’t tend to have two bad games in a row.