Emerging with honours after nervous opening

Schoolboy dreams don't broach missed passes, charged down kicks, being scragged when taking the wrong option. No instead, a young player's senior international debut at Lansdowne Road, should centre on all the positive aspects of his position, culminating in applying the coup de grace to an Irish victory.

It is a measure of his character that debutant scrum-half Peter Stringer when staring at a nightmare, remained composed and upbeat, playing his way through a nervous opening to emerge unscathed: by referee Joel Dume's final whistle he earned the opportunity to grab a happy ending on an afternoon he described as, "the happiest day of my life."

As Ireland struggled in the opening quarter, Stringer and fellow halfback, Ronan O'Gara fumbled their way through the basic duties, their nervousness palpable. One or two asinine remarks aside, the crowd tried desperately to lift the two Munster halfbacks, loudly applauding the simplest of achievements.

Their patience was rewarded as both players emerged from a cocoon of insecurity. Stringer was adamant that he was not unduly fazed by the opening 20 minutes. "Obviously we were under pressure and some things weren't going well. I suppose part of it was the whole background of not beating Scotland in the last 12 years.

"Then there was the fact that I was winning my first cap, so trying to organise all these thoughts made it a little difficult to try and settle down immediately. It took us a while probably longer than you would like, ideally. But by the end of the first-half, the start of the second we found our feet. The team scored a few tries and in the end we won fairly convincingly.

"The pace of the game is unlike anything that you have experienced before and you have to come to terms with that." Stringer certainly achieved that goal, his wrist driven, speedy delivery becoming more accurate as the minutes ticked by: as assistant coach Eddie O'Sullivan would later point out: "He (Stringer) kept their back row honest by making a few snipes around the sides of rucks."

Stringer attributed his new found stability to those players around him who kept encouraging and driving him on. "I was growing in confidence as the game went on. Some of that was down to the guys around me.

"I have played with the likes of Ronan (O'Gara) and Anthony (Foley) for Munster, I know their game and that helps. I knew what we had to do on the day and things just got better and better. It was a tremendous feeling and one that's a little hard to describe. To be honest time just seemed to go faster and faster."

The memory that the young Shannon scrum-half will cherish above all others is the moment in which he ran out onto Lansdowne Road. "Trotting out was something special. Just playing in front of a crowd that size and hear them chanting and singing is the best feeling ever.

"I remember Woody's speech in the dressingroom beforehand. He came up to me and told me to play my own game. It would be just another match on the day, even though there is 50,000 people watching, I know it is a cliche but you do have to treat it as just another game and you have to put the outside influences out of your mind and concentrate on your responsibilities.

"It was a great occasion and I was amazed at the depth of feeling you experience when you realise that you're here to play a match. It was all I expected and more, incredible: the best day of my life."