Two defeats of lower ranked teams and two losses to higher ranked opponents would seem to have done no more than confirm what we already know about the current Scotland side, but this autumn’s last match could prove vital if it reinforced 2018’s biggest lesson, namely the importance of Greig Laidlaw.

What has become ever more clear since the scrum-half’s recovery from injury and reintroduction to the starting line-up during the Six Nations Championship is his importance as nothing less than an on-field coach to this team. There have been many more gifted scrum-halves in Scottish rugby, even in his time in the game and on playing ability alone it was wholly understandable that he had to wait so long for his chance, spending years understudying Mike Blair at Edinburgh, at a time when Blair and fellow Scotland captains Chris Cusiter and Rory Lawson were all individually much better players.

On earning his opportunities, however, first properly fighting his way into the Scotland side out of position at stand off when already 26 years old, the quality of his rugby brain and decision making have become increasingly evident, as further demonstrated at Clermont Ferrand where he has been afforded the rare honour for a foreign player of being appointed captain, fitting perfectly, as he does, with the grand French tradition trusting in a little general at scrum-half.

There is much discussion in sport about the physical importance of nature versus of nurture and in that regard Laidlaw’s genes seem hugely relevant. Scotland’s greatest ever rugby player, Gary Armstrong, the team’s captain in the one season that the talents of the national team’s current head coach were properly harnessed in every sense, is a fellow native of the tiny Borders town of Jedburgh. It is surely no coincidence, then, that the man who played a huge role in Armstrong’s development, even selflessly switching position to stand off to accommodate the up-and-coming youngster when he was the current Scotland scrum-half and wholly entitled to insist on continuing to gain match practise there, was Laidlaw’s uncle Roy.

What has meanwhile been very noticeable in terms of narrative is that, having been something of a mantra up to the first match of last season’s Six Nations Championship, when their haste resulted in a first half spent travelling not so much more slowly, but backwards towards their own line in Cardiff, the phrase ‘playing the fastest rugby in the world’ has hardly been heard since the second match of that campaign when a victory was registered against France. Having set a new record of appearances as a Scotland captain under Vern Cotter, that was the first match Laidlaw had started since Gregor Townsend was appointed coach and the change of style, frenzy making way for composure, was key to a change of fortune which also brought another long-awaited win against then world no. 2 ranked England.

In similar vein, another major lesson from the year is the importance of a player who performs a similar on-field coaching role in the pack. No-one was mentioning breakdown problems during the Six Nations when John Barclay was captain and the flanker is another who has had a commanding on-field persona ever since the days when his old school coach, the late John Foster, reckoned his presence alone was enough to win Dollar Academy the Scottish Schools Cup, such was the impact on the opposition when they discovered that having missed most of a season through injury, Barclay would play.

Overwhelmed as Scotland were by the Springboks in that area two weekends ago and, despite Townsend’s protestations otherwise, having found the Pumas a real handful in that area as they lost almost every statistical battle on Saturday except on the scoreboard, the current management must hope - as Edinburgh coach Richard Cockerill assured us was the case last week – that Barclay’s rehab stays on schedule and he is consequently back for the New Year.

Far from fast-flowing, Saturday’s encounter was what we know to expect when evenly matched teams are exposed to a wet Murrayfield, something one pundit claimed Scotland had not had to contend with for two years, drawing an understandably astounded reaction from an English colleague.

Put another way, the recent much-improved home record has been founded on playing in weather they cannot rely upon on their home turf, emphasising the importance of finding a way to win, a phrase which seems so much better suited to association with the Laidlaws and Barclays of this world. Scotland did so on Saturday thanks to Laidlaw’s goal-kicking and his realisation that a shout from Stuart Hogg when the full-back spotted space down the Puma blindside as the scrum-half was preparing to fire the ball the other way, should be trusted, resulting in Sean Maitland scoring the game’s only try.

Reflecting on the campaign as a whole, then, while seeking to maintain the policy of always accentuating positives, Laidlaw was correct when saying it had been an autumn in which, in his absence, Scotland had been “right in the game in Wales” and “been within touching distance of the third slash fourth best team in the world in South Africa.” He is, however, too shrewd not to be aware that South Africa are actually rightly ranked fifth in the world and that Scotland ended the campaign similarly within touching distance of the ninth ranked team in the world in Argentina.

On the scoreboard a crucial difference between the sides as a 14-9 win was ground out on Saturday was the reliability of Greig Laidlaw’s right boot as against that of Pumas stand off Nicolas Sanchez, but in terms of what has been learned in 2018 as a whole, what Scotland must understand is that the importance of their captain cannot now be over-stated.