Allan Massie: A third of the way to the "miracle" Published on Wednesday 6 June 2012 01:39 LAST Saturday, I wrote that it would be good if we won one of the three Tests on this tour, very good if we won two, and marvellous, indeed a miracle, if we won all three. Well, we're a third of the way to the miracle, and this leaves us with two questions. Can we get there, and why do we always seem to have to play in vile conditions in the southern hemisphere? This was the fourth successive match in wind and rain, following the Georgia, Argentina and England games in the World Cup. Still it should be different in Fiji and Samoa. This wasn't the best Australian team, but then let's not forget that we were without Lee Jones, David Denton and Jim Hamilton, all first choices in the Six Nations. Anyway it was the best team available to Australia - and we won. When Greig Laidlaw lined up that winning kick, I said, "maybe his technique will fail him in the wind, but his nerve won't." Neither did. Terrific. You could see how much it meant to the players even before the celebratory clash of heads between Alasdair Strokosch and Joe Ansbro, Ross Rennie, who had been lying on the ground to steady the ball for Laidlaw, had leaped to his feet and was lifting Laidlaw high in the air almost before the touch-judges flags went up - and this after making the Lord knows how many tackles. Defence wins matches, as my old friend Rodney Pow is always telling me, and that was the case in Newcastle. For the first 35 minutes of the second half the Wallabies were camped in our half, mostly within the 22, and had possession of the ball for fully 30 minutes of that time. Yet they were felled time and again by a quite remarkably brave and committed Scottish defence, with the back row of Strokosch, John Barclay and Rennie outstanding. The discipline too was extraordinary. It helped admittedly that Australia played with a marked lack of intelligence. They kept trying to do the same thing over and over again, in the hope that the result would be different. Why neither Will Genia, whom some rate the best scrum-half in the world, nor Berrick Barnes tried a grubber kick or a chip over the top of the onrushing Scottish defence is a mystery. When eventually Barnes attempted a drop goal and failed , it was a sign that Scotland had weathered the storm... Then at last when a long kick from Harris went dead, we got into the Aussie half. The much-maligned Nick De Luca made a nice break up the left. The forwards kept possession cleverly and worked up towards the 22. Second time round, the South African referee acceded to Chris Cusiter's demand for a penalty at the scrum when Euan Murray destroyed his opposite number, and Laidlaw did the rest. It was tremendous, and by breaking the run of defeats it will have removed a weight from the players" backs. That said, it was a game from which we learned nothing new. The conditions determined that. We competed splendidly on a day utterly unsuited to the running and handling game. So we don't know if we are any nearer to playing the fluent and controlled rugby that lets you score tries against good defences. There were two or three moments in the first quarter of an hour when we came close to scoring a try only to cough the ball up or attempt an off-load too ambitious for the conditions. There was one other close thing when Stuart Hogg's splendid Garryowen had Australia in trouble, but the ball bounced kindly for their wing Joe Tomane and unkindly for Joe Ansbro. The question now is whether this victory is another one-off or whether we can build on it as we failed to build on the equally heroic 9-8 defeat of Australia at Murrayfield in November 2009 and the 21-17 win against South Africa the following year. This will be the real test. Finally anyone unfortunate enough to have watched the Scotland-Australia game in the Junior World Cup on Friday must realise just how great an effort is required from the Scottish management, coaches and, most of all, players, to put together a side capable of beating one of the top rugby-playing countries. Our under-20 team played bravely and shone in flashes, but the gulf between them and the young Australians was embarrassingly wide. If it had been a boxing-match the referee would have stopped the fight midway through the third round. The skill, pace and know-how of the junior Wallabies were all remarkable.