KEY POINTS:
You could call Chris Paterson a Jock of all trades. Except that suggests a player not essential anywhere but handy everywhere.
Paterson - the only man at the Rugby World Cup with a 100 per cent kicking record - is essential for Scotland.
The Pumas will certainly be
wary of the chief weapon in the Caledonian armoury. Paterson's right boot has become as fearsome as Mons Meg, the six-ton siege gun that stands on the ramparts at Edinburgh Castle.
His eight-and-half size boot has yet to miss the target thus far in the tournament - as L'Equipe, the French daily sports paper, reminds the world each morning with a headshot of the Scotland left wing and the legend '100 per cent' at the top of its Buteurs column.
The six penalties Paterson kicked to earn Scotland an 18-16 victory against Italy in their decisive Pool C encounter in Saint-Etienne last Saturday took his tally for the World Cup to 15 out of 15.
"Chris and his goal-kicking was sensational," Scotland coach Frank Hadden said. He was not the first Scotland coach to express such sentiments. Back in 2003, when Paterson landed six place kicks out of six against Wales in a Six Nations Championship fixture at Murrayfield, Ian McGeechan said: "I know now how Clive Woodward feels."
Paterson has been the leading boot boy in the past two Six Nations, with 17 out of 19 in 2006 (89 per cent) and 22 out of 25 in 2007 (88 per cent). Together with his running World Cup tally, that makes a total of 54 out of 59 in competition play in the past two years. In all test matches since the start of 2006, the 30-year-old Gloucester recruit boasts a record of 70 out of 79.
Unlike Wilkinson and New Zealand's Dan Carter, Paterson has had no problems mastering the supposedly elongated Gilbert World Cup ball.
Unlike those celebrated No 10s, he has declined to enter the debate about it. A typical born-and-bred Borderer, the Galashiels native goes about his business with the minimum of fuss.
It is no false modesty that makes Paterson wince whenever the precious worth of his kicking is put to him.
"I do get quite embarrassed about it," he says. "I think too much is made of it. I just see it as a duty. There's a lot more to the game than taking kicks."
Paterson has been a huge help to his country in whichever role he has been cast. An outside-half in his youth and in his early senior days with Gala, he made his Scotland debut as a full-back, against Spain in the 1999 World Cup.
He then became established as a wing but was switched to stand-off by McGeechan midway through Scotland's 2003 World Cup campaign, and he was deployed in the No 10 position by Hadden in the warm-up matches for this year's tournament - before finding himself pushed out to the left wing once again.
"I just want to go out there and play," he says. "It genuinely doesn't matter to me which position I play. I'm just happy to play for Scotland."
Paterson has done so 80 times now, seven caps short of Scott Murray's national record haul. He is also just two tries shy of the Scotland try-scoring record of 24, held jointly by Ian Smith and Tony Stanger and on the points-scoring front, he has 609. Gavin Hastings' record stands at 667.
"There's nothing wrong with having high aspirations," he says. "We're through to the quarter-finals and Scotland are good at one-off games.
"Let's be honest, we were hanging on at the end against Italy. There was a huge sense of relief at the final whistle. We're going into the quarter-finals without having really fired a shot in attack and that can only be a good thing. We've still got a lot up our sleeve."
- INDEPENDENT
