Having been appointed to the miserable business of sitting on the panel reviewing England’s World Cup performance it was good to see that two-time Scotland and three British & Irish Lions head coach Ian McGeechan could still have a bit of time for some light relief and used it to select a Lions XV based on World Cup performances.

From a Scottish perspective his selection was encouraging because I remember him sitting at a press conference at Murrayfield back in 2000, early in his second spell as national coach, when Jeremy Guscott caused considerable irritation by suggesting that Scotland would have as few as three representatives among the 37 man squad heading to Australia the following year.

It was as much Guscott’s typically derisive tone as the content of what he was saying that was hard to listen to and, truth be told, it was all the more unpleasant when Graham Henry, the Lions head coach, then proved him right by selecting only Tom Smith, Scott Murray and Simon Taylor. Of those three only Smith played in the Test matches, albeit Gordon Bulloch also did so after being called up as a replacement, while Andy Nicol, to his own great amusement, was virtually hauled out of a bar to sit on the bench for the final Test as a result of a scrum-half injury crisis.

Setting aside the strong suspicion that he was seeking to expose a disproportionate number of Welsh players to that level of rugby at a time when he was also Wales head coach, Henry’s disregard of Scottish players reflected the direction in which the sport was headed.

In 2005 it was a similar story with only Bulloch, Chris Cusiter, the only one to play a Test (as a substitute) and Taylor selected in the original 44 man party while, with 51 players used in all, Jason White was the last of the seven replacements sent for.

In 2009 it was even worse as, with McGeechan in charge, only Euan Murray and Australian-born and bred Nathan Hines represented Scotland in the original 37 man squad, albeit Mike Blair and Ross Ford were called up as injury replacements ahead of the tour. Only Ford saw any Test action, playing 50 minutes of the final Test.

Last time around the three man quota was re-established in the original squad, Richie Gray, Stuart Hogg and New Zealand born-and-bred Sean Maitland all selected, while Ryan Grant was called up as an injury replacement during the tour, only Gray, in the final 12 minutes of the decisive match, seeing any Test action.

How many would go along with McGeechan’s mix of seven Welshmen, four Scots and two each from Six Nations champions Ireland and their championship runners-up England, is open to debate admittedly. However if nothing else it was nice to see that the man who has more recently proclaimed that he is a product of the English game remembered his old international attachments when including Mark Bennett, Greig Laidlaw, Willem Nel and Richie Gray not in a projected Lions squad but in a Test XV.

His selection of Bennett fits with the 22-year-old Ayrshireman’s selection as one of the three candidates for the World Rugby ‘Breakthrough Player of the Year’ award and Scotland’s general setpiece excellence, which has been helped hugely by the recruitment of South African Nel, is also rightly recognised.

Laidlaw’s selection would be disputed by many from the other Celtic countries given Conor Murray’s consistent excellence for several years and the form Gareth Davies showed for Wales, but his leadership and goal-kicking have been huge factors in galvanising Scotland.

Even for those of us who have doubts about the relevance of the Lions in competitive sporting terms, selection for them remains the ultimately personal accolade for players on an individual basis and it is vital for Scotland that it is well represented next time around so that those involved grow in confidence and bring that back to the national squad, so here’s hoping McGeechan is right.