AS a nation celebrated at their expense, Scotland's rugby tourists were last night left to consider the damage done to their inter-national credibility after 80 minutes of abject humiliation in Fiji.

A scoreline of 51-26 was horrific enough in its own right, but the 7-2 try count best demonstrated the depths Scotland plumbed in failing to cope with the Fijian's pace on the counter-attack.

Coach Jim Telfer sought to play down the significance of the result, but he was the man who insisted on this match being upgraded to Test status, thus depriving his players of the excuse that this was merely a warm-up on the way to the greater challenges ahead in Australia.

He maintained afterwards that he does not regret that decision, saying: ''We needed a strong, hard match and I think we could have done a hell of a lot better if we had held our passes early on, got more control, and taken our chances.

''I thought we played quite well, but we made a lot of un-forced errors. So did they, actually. It was a game of errors in the first half anyway. In the second we had passages of play that were very good.''

It was hard to believe this broadly sympathetic assessment was that of a man, the mention of whose very name has been known to strike fear into the hearts of battle-hardened forwards.

Particularly so after a side that had not played Test rugby since last August and which met only 10 days earlier to start their preparations, had dissected his highly paid squad - just more than 24 hours after rugby in Fiji had belatedly turned professional.

Their coach, Brad Johnstone, had, before the game, bemoaned his problems in getting his overseas players together with local players for meaningful preparation.

Consequently, he inadvertently heaped added embarrassment on the Scots with his post-match appraisal. ''We played at 60 to 65% today,'' he said. ''We made far too many errors and didn't start believing in ourselves until later in the match.''

However, the context is that Scotland, the multi-million pound enterprise run by the massive SRU operation at Murrayfield, lost to a country whose administration is run from a ramshackle little office in Suva and struggles to pay the team's hotel bills.

''We pray for a sponsor,'' said Johnstone, hoping this performance can provide a catalyst for commercial interest. ''There's a huge amount of untapped ability here. These boys are only half- baked at the moment.''

Although they did once beat the British Lions in a match where the tourists were not awarded caps, this was Fiji's first success against one of the Home Unions and it was achieved with astonishing ease - and this in a country where sevens still reigns supreme and who failed to qualify for the 1995 World Cup.

As Scotland captain Rob Wainwright succinctly put it when asked if he had ever endured a worse time on a rugby pitch: ''Probably, but it doesn't spring to mind.''