And with an encounter with an up-and-coming Netherlands side scheduled for next month, the Scots will have the perfect chance to show how they have improved.

She said: “Last season we were coming off a World Cup so there were a lot of retirements and as a result a lot of younger girls coming through.

“This year we haven’t had that much of a turnover so hopefully we should perform a lot better.

“We were all disappointed with how things went last year, no one wants to pick up the Wooden Spoon but we just have to put it behind us.

“We have our performance indicators and we need to be better than we were last year, but we’re confident we can do that.

“We’re all really excited about the game against the Netherlands. They are real trailblazers in the women’s game. They have a fully professional sevens team ahead of sevens becoming an Olympic sport in 2016.

“Our program is still very much based on 15s but it will be interesting to see whether their sevens players will be available.”
Brown admits that the support of the SWRU has been vital in securing the clash against the Netherlands.

She added: “We are really lucky to have a management team who have offered us so much support getting us games like this.
“We’ve had games against Sweden and Spain in the last few years and that’s really important for our development.”