Scotland take confidence and a “nothing to lose mentality” to the Rugby World Cup, said head coach Gregor Townsend.
The Scots kick-off against defending champions South Africa and also face Grand-Slam winning Ireland in Pool B.
“South Africa and Ireland will be favourites against us,” said Townsend after naming his 33-man squad.
“We’ll be outsiders but that gives us a nothing to lose mentality. We just need to focus on delivering our game and go after the opposition.”
Scotland are on an eight-match losing streak against the Irish and have one win in 15 against South Africa.
However, Townsend is heartened by finishing third in the Six Nations and two very close encounters with tournament hosts France this month.
“Even though we are fifth in the world, we’re playing teams ranked above us – and our half of the draw has two other teams from the top four in the world (New Zealand and France),” he added.
“But we’ve shown we can score tries against very good teams – home and away, so we know we can deliver when it counts.
“It’s a young squad growing in belief. You get that from going to places like Twickenham and coming away with a win, you get that from being a match for the top teams in the world.”
Townsend, who suffered the disappointment of pool stage elimination in Japan four years ago, described his squad as “the best group of players I’ve ever worked with”.
“There are a lot of encouraging signs,” he said. “What the players did in the Six Nations has got us down a path that we want to do more of, playing at speed, giving our best ball carriers more opportunities to have a go at the defence.
“Probably the key thing for us as coaches is seeing how well the players have connected over these last two months. The quality they are bringing out in training, we’re starting to see that more and more in our game.”
‘We have to bring our best game straight away’
A second string side eked out a 25-13 win over Italy in Edinburgh at the end of July, while Scotland and France traded narrow home wins in the following preparation Tests.
There will be one final farewell outing against Georgia at Murrayfield on 26 August.
“It would be nice to have more warm-up games,” said Townsend. “You go into a World Cup as a northern hemisphere team with just a couple of games, maybe three, for the players who will be starting against South Africa.
“From Saturday night in Saint Etienne we’ve seen signs that we can get our game out this early in the season.
“We know that challenge of playing the world champions is a big one, so we have to bring our best game straight away. We’ve seen progress week to week and that’s what we’ll be working on.
“We believe that we can be a match for anyone. We still haven’t knocked off Ireland over the past few years. We did well against them for 50 minutes this season but we didn’t do it for 80 minutes.
“It will have to be 80-minute performances against South Africa and Ireland in particular.
“That means when you don’t have the ball you’re still as strong, making it very tough for them to score, that means delivering your best scrum and lineout and then in attack playing like we’ve been doing this year, building more accuracy into our game, and taking the opportunities when they come.”
