Scotland lock Scott Cummings has urged his team-mates to deliver a statement victory against New Zealand when the teams clash at Murrayfield on Saturday.
The Scots have never beaten the All Blacks in 33 previous attempts, a barren run which spans over 120 years.
Gregor Townsend’s side have come agonisingly close in recent times, most notably last year when they were undone by a late Damian McKenzie try in a 25-17 defeat.
With the Nations Championship now set to resume over the next few weeks, Cummings is desperate to finally get over the line rather than being part of another glorious failure.
‘It would be up there,’ said the Glasgow Warriors and Scotland second row. ‘It’s obviously a massive occasion.
‘We don’t want to get too excited and think about the history behind it. We’re just a team that wants to try and get better and improve in what we’ve been doing and not be that nearly team anymore.
‘It’s just really important that we take it one foot at a time and don’t get ahead of ourselves.
‘We’ve got the All Blacks, an incredibly tough team, in front of us and we need to play our best rugby, but obviously a win would be a massive statement for us.
Scott Cummings is keeping his eye on the ball ahead of Scotland clash with New Zealand
‘The record against New Zealand has been mentioned but it’s not something that we’re focusing on. We don’t want to continue with this mindset: “Oh, we get a crack at them”. We believe that we can compete.
‘If we play our best rugby, we can compete with the best teams in the world and we can beat anyone. So we don’t want to go into this game just with the thought of: “Oh, we’ll give it a crack”.
‘We’re going in there to try and win and put out our best performance. The fact we haven’t beaten them before isn’t something we’re focusing on.
‘We’ve chatted about the excitement about being the first Scotland team that could beat them more than the fact that we haven’t beaten them previously.
‘I think it’s a positive for us to go out there and try and make history. But we know it’s going to take a full 80-minute performance.
‘Beating some of those big Southern Hemisphere teams is what we aspire to do. We ran South Africa pretty close in the summer and we’ve obviously got a massive game now back at Murrayfield.
Cummings and head coach Gregor Townsend feel ready for challenge of All Blacks
‘We had a close one last year against the All Blacks but we don’t want to be that close team anymore. We want to get over the hurdle. It would be massive for us.’
It was during Dave Rennie’s time in charge of Glasgow Warriors that Cummings really started to break through and establish himself.
With Rennie now head coach of the All Blacks, Cummings is looking forward to coming up against his old boss.
‘Yeah, it’s obviously great for him,’ added the 29-year-old. ‘He’s a really quality coach, which he showed at Glasgow when he worked with a lot of us.
‘He had a massive focus on attacking rugby and that fitted with how we played at Glasgow. I really enjoyed my time with him and, you know, happy to see he’s gone on to higher honours.
‘He’ll know some of our players, we’ll know some things about him, but a lot has changed. Probably the game’s changed a bit since he was coaching us.
‘It’ll be exciting to get to play them against them again. The recent games between the teams have been really close and I’m sure this weekend will be another great game.’
