BEING good at rugby is part of Welsh identity, the same way that being rubbish at football has become part of being part of being Scottish. So efficient are they at churning out heroes of the oval ball game down in the Valleys that you might believe the rudiments of rucking and mauling are dispensed in nursery classes. So whenever our boys in blue can show the nation which brought you JPR Williams, Gareth Edwards, Jonathan Davies, Ieuan Evans and George North a thing or two it is a day to be treasured forever. That was the case yesterday as the Welsh were sent back home with scarlet faces for the first time since 2007. Scotland march to Twickenham in a fortnight's time hoping to complete their first triple crown since 1990 while a victory back here against Italy would see them complete their first home clean sweep of the Six Nations era.

It was a victory which Scotland had to fight like Lions for - not least because they were eye-balling so many of their direct competitors for a place in the British and Irish Lions tour to New Zealand this summer. Halfpenny v Hogg, Biggar v Russell, Wyn Jones against the Gray brothers; everywhere you looked this doubled as a trial match for the watching former Wales coach Warren Gatland as he considers his options for the trip to his homeland this summer. There were other top performers in Welsh colours besides - not least scrum half Rhys Webb - but this was a signature Scottish performance which left Wales coach, and Lions attack coach, Rob Howley scrabbling around for answers.

That 2007 victory here came in a tryless match - courtesy of seven penalties from Scotland's all time top points scorer Chris Paterson, against three from Wales' Stephen Jones - but few perhaps predicted a similar kind of kicking day from Finn Russell, considering he was deputising for injured captain and deadly kicker Greig Laidlaw, and had managed to fluff his lines from just yards out with a conversion in Paris last weekend, when the ball had fallen off its tee just as he prepared to kick it.

There might even have been a few nerves when the No 10 stood over an early sighter for three points from an eerily similar position early on, but we needn't have worried. Aside from one missed touch early on, Finn was flawless. The Glasgow Warriors fly-half potted all five of his penalties and two conversions, one of which came after bouncing off a post at an oblique angle, and the man of the match's high kicking paved the way for one of Scotland's most fruitful ways of advancing the ball all day, via unerring catches by the likes of Tim Visser.

The scrum-half alongside him, at least for the first hour, didn't do too badly either. Ali Price, on his first full start for Scotland, led Welsh giants a merry dance at times and produced some big tackles too. Typically, this Scotland team's swashbuckling back division ran in two tries which even the likes of JPR Williams et al would have been proud, both of which involved some serious tiptoeing up the touchline. First Tommy Seymour touched down in the corner after Hogg's delayed pass had released Tim Visser, then Visser himself got in on the act after Russell and Hogg had seen the possibilities.

OK, so Liam Williams continued his knack of scoring a try in every Six Nations match when he benefited from a tap Webb free kick to put Scotland into early arrears, and the TMO twice saved Scotland from further breaks from the savvy scrum-half, but Scotland fought fire with fire and deserved everything they have got here - even if it meant Richie Gray and Ross Moriarty pushing and shoving as they went up the tunnel at half time. Already without Laidlaw, they soon lost Hardie and Gordon Reid to knocks in an attritional contest. But Scotland showed that they too are made of stern stuff. And at least one man will return to Llanelli with a smile on his face: Scotland's stand-in skipper, and Scarlets back row, John Barclay.