The entire scene painted a picture of an amazing bond, not just between players and supporters, but more particularly within the squad. As Jean Pierre Rives . . . artist and philosopher these days apparently . . . said last week, Argentina really do seem like the the last of world rugby's great amateurs and it's easy to see the electric bonhomie that exists between this group of players.

Not that they're anyway amateur on the field. Marcelo Loffreda's side played Ireland perfectly last weekend.

Eddie O'Sullivan clearly didn't have a notion of how to counteract Argentina's tactics but Frank Hadden should be more clued in.

The Scottish coach needs, first of all, to ensure that all of his back three sit deep so that his side have options on the counterattack and secondly, that they compete for every ball at breakdown as though it was the last time they might ever get their hands on it. If they do that, they have the ammunition to beat Argentina, particularly if Chris Paterson's place kicking is as accurate as it has been all tournament and that's exactly why the Pumas need to be extremely careful that they don't give away too many stupid penalties, as they sometimes tend to do.

Aregentina also have to tighten up their creaky lineout if they're to get enough ball for Juan Hernandez to launch high up the air, as well as becoming comfortable with the tag of favourites, even if their captain believes they should just try to ignore the fact that most people on planet rugby fancy them to win in Paris tonight. "People said we were favourites against Ireland but we never believed that and we will continue as before, " says Agustin Pichot, their clever and inspirational scrum-half. We can't underestimate any teams. We played Namibia, Georgia and we never underestimated them."

Felipe Contepomi is selected to start for Argentina after shrugging off a flu, while Juan Leguizamon comes into the bench after missing out on last week's game. Scotland stick with the same team that scraped past Italy and while they're a big team in general, they don't seem to have quite the same spark in crucial positions as Argentina do.

In saying that, this game might not be as straight-forward for the South Americans as most people think but only a serious bout of stage fright will stop them qualifying for their first ever World Cup semi-final.