Will Scotland coach Andy Robinson have reason to smile after this year's Six Nations battle? © PA

As 2010 moves from January towards February it comes to my favourite part of the year, Six Nations time. A snell bite to the wind, still the odd cruddy bit of snow still on the hills and the sound of Brian Moore/Jeremy Guscott/Jonathan Davies being argued with in living rooms all over the land. Well, sections of it.

We Scots have had little to shout about since the last time I was graciously allowed to post here on fanzone. Not many Lions. No team getting out of the Heineken Cup group stages. We still don't have much of a standoff, we still can't score tries, and Euan Murray still isn't available to play (for the opener at least, falling as it does on a Sunday) so our scrum may not be as much of a force as it could be. And despite some decent evidence to the contrary offered in South Africa over last summer, Ross Ford still needs to practice his line-out throwing. So far, so 2009. So no hope?

Since the last Six Nations of course we have had a change at the top - we now have a steely Englishman in charge in the shape of Andy Robinson who after engineering victory over Australia is fast on his way to national treasure status (as is Matt Giteau). He seems to be picking on form so we get the right scrum half and captain in the shape of Chris Cusiter, who spent a lot of last year in form and on the bench despite our clamouring. We still have Chris Paterson who is the world's best goal kicker on most days so the points are there if the breakdown lottery continues and we can play the game in the right areas of the park. A decent back row (Barclay, Beattie and usually Brown but probably Strokosch for France) who have been helping their team to the top of the Magners doesn't hurt in that regard either.

Tries are a worry though: we still have the pace and attacking instinct of the Evans brothers but Morrison at 12 seems to relish contact more than offloading to get it out to them, and we are all hoping to see more of what Alex Grove can do in attack, having proven his defensive mettle in the autumn.

The old stand-off debate has flared up again here in recent weeks, with Dan Parks in the form of his life for league leaders Glasgow but Phil Godman seen as the lesser of two evils at International level despite a pretty poor kicking game. We do have a young tyro of whom much is hoped in the shape of Ruaridh Jackson but his inclusion in the squad is probably more of a learning curve thing. Still, a couple of good A games coupled with early defeats for the main team might see him thrown in at the deep end. But we hope it doesn't come to that. Must think positive.

Let us not forget that within this tournament still somewhere lies that spark of excitement and possibility, the sort of thing that the late great Bill McLaren nurtured in all of us during our youth watching it on the telly, that gets us talking with fellow fans about great games of rugby whoever was playing and keeps us all looking forward to this time of year with, dare I say it, hope. All we really want from our teams is to bring back that spark once a year.

That, and a Grand Slam.

Rory Baldwin is the Editor of Scottish Rugby Blog.