Ford: Scotland skipper

The Edinburgh hooker was a surprise choice as skipper in some quarters given that he does not perform the role at club level, where he is captained by Scotland fly-half Greig Laidlaw.

Ford is also not the most vocal of players and his position means he spends much of the game buried inside scrums and rucks, hindering his tactical awareness.

But he said: "It's not that hard really, there are leaders throughout the team, so there are players I can talk to all the time about what is happening and why.

"Against Australia, there was Al Kellock, who captains Glasgow, and Greig Laidlaw, who captains Edinburgh, both in the starting team as well as players like Mike Blair who have been Scotland captains in the past.

"There is no shortage of people to go to for advice, all I have to do is ask."

The Australia Test brought a tense 9-6 win, helping Ford to put aside the memory of an RBS 6 Nations wooden spoon campaign under his captaincy earlier this year.

Laidlaw's late penalty earned his club-mate a first win as skipper and though Ford was too exhausted really to understand the magnitude of the achievement at the time, he is optimistic of building on a memorable result as his side move on to face Fiji and Samoa.

"It was a beautiful feeling lifting the Hopetoun Cup at the end, but to be honest I was really too tired to take it all in," he said.

"After that match and all that effort, I was knackered, so it took a few hours to sink in.

"It was a great feeling, to have come all this way and produced a result like that was special. For me too, it was fantastic to get a win as captain.

"It was not a good feeling after the Six Nations, but now that I have got that monkey away there will be plenty more to come.

"That is all in the past, you have got to look to the future. We have looked at what happened and analysed it to death, now it is time to move on and look at the challenges coming up.

"It is a happy, united squad, we all get on together and we all believe that we can keep winning."

Ford was confident Laidlaw would win the game at the death, with the Scots initially trying to steer him into drop-goal position before the fly-half's own break set up a big push from the scrum.

"I don't think anybody said anything, we just all knew," he said. "It was one of those things, we had to go for it.

"Confidence was high because we had had a couple of good scrums just before, and we always thought that we could have a go at them. It was not the kind of game in those dreadful weather conditions that was going to be won by a try."

The first scrum could have led to a penalty but there was little doubt about the second, nor about the outcome of the subsequent kick.

"Greig has been knocking these kicks over all season for Edinburgh, so I never had any doubt that he would do the same this time," said Ford.

"He has done it so regularly under pressure that there was never a second's hesitation, I just handed him the ball and left him to it."