Twickenham, kick-off 4pm. Live on ITV.
WHAT’S AT STAKE?
A place in the last four of the Rugby World Cup. The winners of this quarter-final will play the winners of Ireland v Argentina next Sunday, also at Twickenham.
GROUNDS FOR OPTIMISM
The successful appeal against their three-week bans by Ross Ford and Jonny Gray has been a massive boost to the Scotland squad, and made two of his most important players available again to head coach Vern Cotter. In addition, the Wallabies have lost two of their own key players, David Pocock and Israel Folau, to injury.
CAUSE FOR CONCERN
The absence of those two men still leaves a formidable amount of talent in the Australian squad. Their defence put in the outstanding display of the tournament so far when down to 13 men against Wales, and in attack they have any number of options. Matt Giteau and Tevita Kuridrani, the centres, are particularly dangerous: expect them to carry a lot of ball today straight at their opposite numbers, Mark Bennett and Peter Horne.
KEY CONTEST
John Hardie v Michael Hooper. Australia usually play two opensides but in Pocock’s absence will rely on Hooper to win a lot of ball on the deck. Scotland are the team with two natural No 7s today in Blair Cowan and Hardie, but, with Cowan starting at 6, Hardie will take on the main responsibility for denying Australia possession at the breakdown, or at least slowing down the ball they do win there.
TACTICAL BATTLE
Scotland will fight fire with fire and try to attack as much as possible, having decided that a conservative game will produce at best a narrow defeat. It will be up to fly-half Finn Russell to decide just how expansive a game they can afford to attempt. Bernard Foley, his opposite number, was superb against England and has any number of options when in possession. Having seen how much damage Samoa did to the Scotland defence, Foley can be expected to keep it tight at first, driving play forward through his pack and centres. If and when gaps open up, he will bring his back three into play.
PREDICTION
Australia 30 Scotland 14
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here