Head coach Vern Cotter’s long goodbye looks like becoming an ever fonder farewell after a decade long sequence of first day flops finally ended in the Six Nations Championship on Saturday.

Prior to the weekend the victory claimed by Frank Hadden’s men 11 years ago stood alone as the only time Scotland had won their opening Six Nations match.

Perhaps even more tellingly Cotter and his predecessors had overseen the longest sequence of failures in the first Test of the year in the near 150 year history of Scottish international rugby.

The 2006 campaign overseen by Hadden, the last homegrown coach of the national team, meanwhile also remains unique because it is the one season since Italy joined the competition that Scottish wins have outstripped defeats.

Whitewashed in his first campaign Cotter made progress with two Championship victories on the back of an encouraging World Cup performance last season, however and his men have now given themselves every chance of sending him off as a Six Nations winner.

“There has to be confidence,” he said after the 27-22 defeat of Ireland.

“It’s nice to be able to go from the first game with a win. The challenge for us is that we get back in and do an honest review and see how we can improve.”

It is frequently said of the Six Nations that momentum is crucial and Scottish experience underlines that.

In 2006 a winning start proved crucial as Sean Lamont scored two tries in the opener just as his clubmate Stuart Hogg did in claiming a first half brace against Ireland on Saturday before yet another Glasgow back, Alex Dunbar, then added a crucial score, importantly stretching the lead to 21-5. That try meant that even after Ireland surged back to take the lead, the Scots were still within range to let skipper Greig Laidlaw’s goal-kicking make the difference in the closing stages.

As they look to build on the win over many people’s pre-tournament favourites they can draw upon another of their own achievements since they now meet a France side they beat last year.

That ended another dismal record run, dating all the way back to that 2006 clash which preceded a 10 match winning sequence of French success, the longest by either side in the history of the fixture.

Now the task is to record a first win in Paris since Scotland’s victory which set up the 1999 Five Nations Championship triumph and Cotter, who spent several years coaching in France before coming to Scotland and is heading back there this summer, knows how formidable the task will be.

Admittedly, in spite of that record against Scotland the French have been the biggest under-performers in the Championship in recent years, failing to get into the top half of the table since 2011 in spite of their vast resources.

However they came close to creating an upset at Twickenham, leading an England side that was on its way to extending its record winning run to 15 and in doing so continued to show the improvements that marked their play in the autumn.

“France offer a different style,” said the Scotland coach.

“Ireland probably threw only a couple of offloads in the second half, but France are going to start the game with offloads. The defensive effort will have to be different, so there will be adjustments in the set-piece.”

Since the lineout largely functioned well on Saturday, that reference to the set-piece alluded to what was always expected to be Scotland’s biggest concern in this competition.

“The scrum was under pressure and we need to solve that quickly. They will have seen that,” Cotter admitted.

However he can take great confidence from the mindset that saw his men cope with an impressive Irish comeback.

Having surged into 14-0 and 21-5 leads in the opening half they might have wilted when they found themselves behind entering the final quarter.

Cotter admitted there had been cause for concern at the way Scotland seemed to be falling out of the game, but he had also felt that as long as they kept their nerve the opportunities would come to finish the way they did.

“We looked like we were losing energy for a while,” he said.

“We knew the other team were upping the ante in the second half. Ireland changed their defence and they were coming at us quite hard and being aggressive, so sooner or later they were going to fade as well.

“We hung in there long enough. We lost purchase and we had a bit of a slip, but we managed to get it back.

“We dug in and got the win. It shows what can happen if you weather those storms and believe in what you’re doing and don’t change.

“A couple of times we perhaps needed to make better decisions. But we got the win because we did enough at the end.

“It’s a good result and it helps us validate things that have been discussed. Now we can move forward and try to get another win.”

The nature of the modern Six Nations, with matches on successive weekends at the start and finish, offers little time to savour wins such as Saturday’s however and Cotter knows it is vital that his team is clear-headed in assessing what went right, but more importantly what needs to improve ahead of their first away game.

“It’s a real challenge for us coming together, but that’s exciting as well, having the challenge to try and improve on a win,” he said.

“It will be positive and honest on Monday and Tuesday.”