Six Nations Championship: Gerry Thornley looks at Scotland's rejuvenation under coach Frank Hadden and the likely implications for Ireland next Saturday

Once Ireland's bêtes noirs, Scotland were put to the sword so clinically in the last five meetings it became something of a bloodless coup.

But the Bravehearts are back. The Scottish team who travel to Lansdowne Road next Saturday are unrecognisable from the recent vintage, by dint of simply going back to their traditional strengths.

Victories over France and England - the first time they have beaten the Big Two in the same season since 1990 - has also given them a newfound confidence to go with their rediscovered fighting spirit.

To put their double whammy at Murrayfield in perspective, the last time Ireland etched an Anglo-French double into their Six Nations CV in the same year was the foot-and-mouth-interrupted campaign of 2001, prior to which the feat hadn't been achieved since 1983.

Now, the Scots have reverted somewhat to basics, with a solid enough setpiece platform (though the scrum and lineout struggled against England) and a vastly improved lineout maul - witness the 30-metre rumble for one of Sean Lamont's tries on the opening Sunday against France.

The men credited with this mini-rejuvenation, Frank Hadden, hasn't set about making the Scots play rugby beyond their capabilities. They are not particularly gifted in the 10-12-13 axis and rarely attack through those channels, though the selection of the slightly mercurial Edinburgh centre Marcus di Rollo has given them a more potent running threat as well as a passing game to utilise the outside three of Lamont, Chris Paterson and Hugo Southwell.

They play to their strengths, namely the ball-carrying of their backrow, especially Simon Taylor (not quite the rangy talent who broke into the Lions squad in 2001, but a bulked up, tougher-tackling version), Jason White and Alastair Hogg.

However, while it mightn't have been in evidence as much against England, under Hadden the Scots have retained the ball better, with a notable emphasis on offloading. Against France, for example, they made 14 offloads in the tackle, as against eight by France, and with 14 men for most of the time in Cardiff, they nearly matched those arch-exponents of the offload, with 21 to their hosts' 23.

Most of all, of course, France and especially England were overcome on the back of a Herculean defensive effort in which, again, the heroics of White, Taylor and Hogg stood out. Against England, the official match stats credited the Scots with 112 tackles, with only six missed.

Their own stats, as always happens, were much higher, in part because they'd been analysed by video and also because they included secondary hits. Their own analyst, Gavin Scott, tallied tackles against England at 196, Hogg leading the way on 20.

Between them, the backrow trio made 53 of those tackles, with the slight Dan Parks - more used to looking for intercepts and not exactly from the Henry Honiball school of outhalf tacklers - chipping in with 14.

Admittedly, England played into Scottish hands with a fairly one-dimensional running game. Great big lumps of English beef on the hoof kept running hard and straight into the shoulders and arms of willing Scotsmen.

The Scottish loose trio may not possess an out-and-out openside, but there's hardly ever been a Scottish player averse to a bit of pilfering at ruck time, and even the official tally of nine turnovers against England looked well short of the actual mark. As their former outhalf Gregor Townsend quipped, "Was that nine turnovers in the first half or the second?"

Credit for what Hadden described as "an absolutely unbelievable defensive effort" was given to Alan Tait, the former centre and rugby league player let go by Matt Williams. Under Tait, Scotland appear to be placing less emphasis on rushing up, more on holding the line and tackling in clusters.

Emphasis has been placed not just on tackle counts, but on weight of hit, what the backroom staff call "big hit rate". For example seven of White's 11 tackles fell into that category. In a pointed reference by Hadden to Williams's previous assertion about Scottish tackling ability, he noted, "Alan started on the premise that Scottish players can tackle."

White, Scotland's answer to Martin Johnson, if not quite his evil twin brother, has been an inspirational leader from the front as captain. His appointment has been another stick to wield at Williams, whose Fortress Scotland policy sought to have all their players based at home.

Hadden himself was the director of rugby at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh for 17 years from 1983. Only gradually did he become involved in coaching adults, and he by no means enjoyed a smooth transition.

His first involvement was as assistant coach to Ian Rankin at the now-defunct Caledonia Reds in the 1997-98 season. His next, two years on, was as assistant coach to Rankin at Edinburgh Reivers, until a reshuffle saw the latter kicked upstairs to the position of manager, leaving Hadden in the line of fire.

It was not a happy place to be in the 2000-01 season, as the Reivers suffered some embarrassing defeats, but critically, he retained the backing of senior figures at Murrayfield, notably the director of rugby, Jim Telfer, and eventually his star rose at Edinburgh, notably when taking them through to the quarter-finals of the Heineken European Cup in 2003.

Though he was overlooked in preference to Williams as successor to Ian McGeechan, Hadden's time came last season, albeit after a couple of "trial" games in charge.

Right time, right place? He may not extol his own virtues and can come across as reserved, but he quickly struck up a rapport with Scottish supporters by pointing out he was one of them, even taking the ferry to Ireland on previous Scottish treks here.

"I spent a lot of years on the terraces," he said after the 18-12 victory over England. "The first thing supporters want to see is pride and passion from their team, and that's what they saw out there."

Another striking feature of the Scots' three performances to date is their fitness, perhaps most impressively against Wales, when, despite playing much of the match with 14 players, they scored two tries in injury time. Admittedly, one of those was a long-range intercept by Paterson, but even so, Hadden's assertion to his players that they would last the 80 minutes every bit as strongly as England was handsomely borne out.

This is all the more curious given the Scottish professional teams do not have full-time fitness coaches and Hadden had reversed Williams's policy of centrally devising and monitoring the players' contracts. Instead, Hadden has placed his trust in the professional teams to deliver Scottish players with the skills and fitness to let him focus on organisation and gameplan.

Hadden was merely being consistent with his oft-stated frustrations as Edinburgh coach, though he also believes Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Borders ought to have been granted more access to their frontline players. Another spin-off of this change in tack, of course, is their teams have done better in the Celtic League this season.

Much-improved fitness levels don't happen overnight of course, and there may well be truth in Williams's assertion in these pages that Scotland's fitness levels are in part down to work done during his tenure.

Indeed, his reign can't have been all bad, despite a record of just one win in two Six Nations campaigns. His professional, ultra-positive contribution to Leinster's improved consistency cannot be forgotten; the province's graph - until the arrival of Michael Cheika and David Knox this year - shot up with Williams's arrival as strikingly as it slipped after his departure. Plenty of Leinster players maintain Williams was one of the best coaches they ever had.

Perhaps it was partly a case of wrong time, wrong place. Perhaps he aimed too high too quickly. He undoubtedly made mistakes and made enemies. In any event, Scottishrugby is not of a mind to grant Williams any kudos, not with Hadden's star in the ascendant.

The 51-year-old schoolteacher is not as erudite as Williams, or as comfortable in the public glare, yet his utterances have been notably more upbeat than Williams's.

Hence, when Williams noted that were a bonus-points system in place, Scotland would be fourth on eight points, behind France and England on 11 and Ireland on nine, it went down like a lead balloon.

The Scotsman newspaper picked up on Williams comments and elicited a sharp rebuke from Tait: "Make no mistake, these wins against France and England are down to what has happened in the last eight months and have little to do with the previous management. It's a joke to say otherwise. . . The reason why the performances were poorer a year ago was simply because the players were not playing for Matt. It wasn't about not being able to tackle, or their defence being poor, but about not understanding or wanting to play for the coach, so they weren't putting their bodies on the line in the way they did this month."

When England did attempt to test Scotland out wider, mostly through Josh Lewsey's intrusions into the line, it did seem the Scots were retreating a little in the outside channels, but they kept making their tackles. And there were no close-in support players and little in the way off offloading in the tackle or even footwork to pose the Scottish defenders different questions.

Ireland, with backs such as Brian O'Driscoll, Gordon D'Arcy and Geordan Murphy, not to mention the strong-running Andrew Trimble and the in-form Shane Horgan, do look better equipped to ask these questions. They have better footwork, most of all, to vary the points of attack, and the handling skills and offloading ability to create and exploit space.

In those last five Ireland-Scotland meetings, the aggregate points tally has been 185 to 67, with a try tally of 22-5. For the most part the Scots haven't been able to live with the cutting edge of O'Driscoll, D'Arcy, Denis Hickie (a try scorer in three of those five games), Murphy and Horgan.

O'Driscoll hasn't scored against the Scots in the last four collisions, dating back to his man-of-the-match hat-trick in the 2002 meeting. If the truth be told, though he did more than anybody to turn the tide against Wales with his excellence in the tackle/breakdown area, last Sunday wasn't one of the great man's most creative games.

One ventures that observation advisedly, or at any rate amid a suspicion that on the few occasions his game comes in for any kind of negative analysis, he usually makes those words fairly edible next time out.

Nevertheless, with a remoulded, rejuvenated Scotland to face, one suspects the scores mightn't come so readily next Saturday and that the aforementioned gamebreakers will need to be on top of their form. The Bravehearts appear to be back.