TO France the spoils and the championship points, but to Scotland the realistic hope that they will be much more than also-rans.

Vern Cotter's side played with cool heads and hard-nosed rugby nous, shutting out France for long periods and coming close to what would have been a momentous victory. They ran out of gas, and were running out of players as their injury toll mounted, but they can look forward to the weeks ahead.

They will sweat on the fitness of Alex Dunbar, who had an outstanding game before being taken off with a shoulder injury - collected as he made a critical tackle on Camille Lopez - and they will be anxious, too, about Tommy Seymour, who survived fewer than 20 minutes before going off with a hip problem. But they can celebrate the restoration of Stuart Hogg as one of the most dangerous strike runners in the game, the stropp- iness and effectiveness of the Gray brothers in the second row, and the gathering maturity of Finn Russell as a Test fly-half.

Scotland were never going to dominate this game, but they dominated for long stretches. Against France's vaunted backline of Yoann Huget, Mathieu Bastareaud, Wesley Fofana and Teddy Thomas, the Scottish three- quarters held their own. Thomas, supposedly the most exciting winger in world rugby, was policed out of the game. The tank-like Bastareaud found his tracks stuck in the mud as he could barely get a sniff of the ball without a swarm of Scottish tacklers turning up at the same time.

Against that, we should not get too far away from the essential point that Scotland still lost. France's points all came from penalties, sweetly converted by Lopez, and Scotland were clearly the victims of their own indiscipline. They had wanted to keep their penalty count in single figures, but in the end it rose to 12.

Frustratingly, some of those were needless. Dougie Fife gave one away for cynically throwing the ball into the crowd after he had run it into touch, and Blair Cowan, pinged for holding on, gave France soft points with barely two minutes on the clock. It was a frustrating pattern as the Scots dealt so admirably with their opponents in broken play, but then gift-wrapped soft chances.

Scotland did do well to hold their end up in the set-pieces. They fell short of being flawless, but that was to be expected against such a huge French pack. They were robbed of their own ball at the line-out a couple of times, but gained revenge by nicking a couple on the French throw.

Scotland also did well to gird themselves and hold the French out during that second-half period when they were reduced to 14 men by the sin-binning of Johnnie Beattie. France were throwing everything forward and had got their driving maul working well - Beattie's card was for trying to stop it illegally - but they held firm. There have been games in the recent past when they would have shipped a barrow-load then.

Certainly, there was a feeling the French were caught on the hop by the effective Scottish defence. They did have one golden opport- unity to score a try when Tim Visser flew out of the defensive line in a failed attempt to intercept a pass, but Scotland's scramble was outstanding, Mark Bennett snuffing out the move when he knocked the ball clean out of Huget's hands a couple of yards short of the line.

By contrast, Scotland had taken their own try-scoring chance brilliantly. Just a minute before half time it sprang, as so much of Scotland's best work did, with a sparkling piece of running by Hogg. The full-back combined with Bennett to take play into the left corner, the forwards rumbled on for a few phases, and the ball was then spread wide. A long pass from Russell was taken by Bennett, who moved the ball on to Euan Murray. Murray appeared to fumble his off-load a little, but Fife collected it well and went over in the right corner.

It was too far out for Greig Laidlaw to convert - France still held a narrow lead, 9-8, as they headed for the changing rooms. It was probably deserved on the balance of play, but the Scots must have felt far more satisfied at the break. They might still have been behind, but they had taken a massive psychological stride with the timing and the manner of their try.

But France tightened up considerably after the break and used their bench well. Their runners had been picked off easily by Scottish tacklers in the first half, but they began to move forward in numbers - yet still never really looked like puncturing the Scottish defence out wide. They built no momentum through the breakdowns, allowing Scotland to keep their shape.

In truth, though, Scotland were all but invisible in the French 22 in the second period. Hogg still threatened, but France were rather more alive to his threat than earlier in the game. Lopez nudged France further ahead with his fourth penalty after 49 minutes, then finished the job with his fifth two minutes from the end.

Scotland will certainly not fear the arrival of Wales next Sunday. France, who head to Ireland, will have to improve sharply if they are to keep their title ambitions on track.

France: S Spedding; Y Huget, M Bastareaud (R Lamerat, 71), W Fofana, T Thomas; C Lopez, R Kockott (M Parra, 55); A Menini (E Arous, 65), G Guirado (B Kayser, 47), R Slimani (U Atonio, 54), P Pape (R Taofifenua, 61), Y Maestri, T Dusautoir (captain; L Goujon, 79)), B Le Roux, D Chouly.

Scotland: S Hogg; T Seymour (D Fife, 16), M Bennett, A Dunbar (P Horne, 68), T Visser; F Russell, G Laidlaw (captain); A Dickinson (G Reid, 60), R Ford (F Brown, 67), E Murray (G Cross, 64), R Gray (J Hamilton, 66), J Gray, R Harley (A Strokosch, 51), B Cowan (R Harley, 54-64), J Beattie.

Referee: N Owens (Wales)