Away back in the mists of time - autumn 2006, to be exact - I made my Scotland debut against Romania.

The second thing is that, even though I was full of the arrogance of youth, I was nervous about Romania beating us.

We won 48-6 in the end, but defeat wasn't beyond the realms of possibility, in my head at least. The Scottish rugby landscape then compared to now is like night and day.

There are 13 changes in the team to play Romania, which is understandable given what's coming at the Stade de France next week.

I'm delighted Hamish Watson is making his first appearance. He's probably one of the best flankers we've produced in the last 15 or 20 years but he had his last World Cup wrecked by injury and he's had to wait until game three to play in this one.

Luke Crosbie gets his first minutes as well - an uncompromising, physical player, just the type of bloke you want for this Test. He'll get you gainline and he's driven.

What I really enjoy about seeing guys like Luke coming through is they've found this level via an alternative path. He didn't go to private school, he went to a school where there was no rugby, so he went through the club system.

He wasn't going to be put off by the fact that his path was harder than a lot of other players. He just cracked on. I'm thrilled for him.

How many more players like Luke can we get through the system? How many more gems can we find? As a nation we have to widen our base and that's one of the greatest challenges we face. We need more Luke Crosbies.

The two boys are joined in the back-row by Matt Fagerson, a guy I'm a big fan of. He's been one of our top performers over the last 24 months and having lost his place to Jack Dempsey he'll want to stick a marker down against Romania.

Are there opportunities for anybody in Saturday's team to force their way into the Ireland game?

It'll be hard, but I can't say our starting back-row in the first two games were all that uncompromising and dominant, plus there's still got to be some uncertainty about Jamie Ritchie, after failing a head injury assessment.

Against Romania, I'd like to see more of what I saw in fits and starts last weekend. It was a good win against Tonga but it was a little bitty in places.

We need to kick it up a gear now. We need to get rid of the handling errors and amp it up in terms of ruthlessness. We need a completely comprehensive victory. We have to destroy Romania and make sure we head to Paris feeling good about ourselves.

Scotland need unrelenting display

I don't want to project that far forward, but it's hard not to when it's Ireland in a do-or-die in Paris.

We need an eight-point win and we have to deny them any kind of bonus point. That scenario hasn't happened in a championship game since 2001.

It'll be horribly difficult. You have to make the game unstructured and hope that you can hang in there and pull off something magical. Get under their skin and wind them up. Fire shots, cause them some issues.

It's do-able but we have to be better in every single facet of our game than in the first two matches. It has to be our perfect 80.

I can't wait for it. Ten years ago, the Stade could be drab, even though there was always 80,000 in there. It could be tepid even when full.

Now, it's a cauldron. Insane. The atmosphere at the France v New Zealand game was in the top two or three atmospheres I've ever experienced. The vibe at the Ireland v South Africa was also unreal.

It'll be electrifying - one of the best atmospheres the Scottish boys will have ever played in front of and something they will remember for the rest of their lives.

We'll come back to that next week. For now, it's about Romania and delivering an unforgiving, unrelenting performance.

They need to put the Romanians to the sword before they can think about the big battle that lies ahead.

Beattie was talking to BBC Scotland's Tom English