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Time to find out if Scotland's gym sessions have paid off

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Betfair's rugby expert Tony Calvin looks ahead at Scotland's bruising clash with Romania

IT is a good job that the Scotland squad look to have spent the whole of the summer in the gym, strapped to a weights machine, because they are going to need all of that added bulk to combat Romania tonight.

Romania look the bet at around evens on the +26.5 line on Betfair, and on the +28 line at 10-11 with other bookmakers.

Scotland really impressed in a 31-21 defeat of Ireland in August, and only a six minute, three try blitz by South Africa saw them beaten 27-3 a fortnight later. But time has shown that Irish performance to be possibly not as good as it looked at the time, and Scotland didn't look too slick in a 56-10 Portugal win.

The latter comment may be a touch harsh, as a much-changed Portugal side really gave it a go against the Kiwis.

But the fact is that Scotland do tend to struggle to put away lesser opposition. They may have beaten Romania 48-6 back in November (previous matches in this decade saw Scotland home by 20 and 27 point margins), but we have seen numerous times in this tournament that teams are raising their game monumentally now they are on the big stage.

Scotland have picked a near full strength side for this match, but the inclusion of Simon Webster at outside centre really stands out. He is a very elusive runner, and look for him running the lines to benefit from the direct running and offloads from is powerful inside centre Rob Dewey.

He is worth a shout to score the first try at around 12-1.

But tries may be in short supply here. The Romanians responded well after going down 8-0 to Italy in the early stages of their opening match, and gave the Italians - a very similar side to Scotland - a real run for their money in a 24-18 loss.

Scotland will be happy to escape from this match with a win, and handicaps in the high 20s could prove beyond them. In fact, I'll be starting this match with a Scotland lay at 1.04 in the outright market, and see where that take me.

Hopefully, Green Book City, pretty damn quick.