Argentina 15-44 Scotland: Reputations clawed back against toothless Pumas
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Allan Dell was among Scotland players celebrating with the home fans
There were some lovely moments in the wake of Scotland's eye-popping Test against Argentina where the passive and pathetic Pumas did their best to live up to the nickname of the place where the game was staged - Resistencia, the city of sculptures.
After the last whistle confirmed that Scotland had just recorded their biggest-ever margin of victory, 29 points, against a top nation in their own country, local fans, many of them them young kids, crowded in on the visiting players and asked for souvenirs. In fairness to them, off the field as well as on, Scotland delivered.
In those post-match moments, they were led by some of their senior members who handed over jerseys and training tops and ruck-sacks and all the other accoutrements of a touring side.
Magnus Bradbury, one of the younger members, did an interview in the corridor then gave his shorts to a fan on request and strode off merrily to the dressing room in his underpants. Compared to last summer, this was upside down stuff.
A year ago, Scotland won their big tour victory in week two and bombed in week three and went home on a bit of a downer. This time, the failure came in week two and the big win came last - and the mood reflected it.
All week we heard about how much the players had talked about what had gone wrong in the United States and all the lengths they were going to in order to put it right. They sounded like men who had been truly hurt by their own passivity in Houston, by their own inability to stand up and fight when the USA got heavy. It had been an awful defeat and they said it had cut very deep.
George Horne scored two tries for Scotland against Argentina
How deep? No words in midweek can accurately reflect it. It's only in their deeds on a Saturday that you truly find out about that stuff.
And there were worries. Adam Hastings and George Horne had been the half-back combination in Houston. As Test players, they are children and Houston wasn't kind to either of them, Hastings in particular.
When Gregor Townsend retained them for Argentina in Resistencia - it was expected that he would move Pete Horne to 10 and Sam Hidalgo-Clyne to nine - he was sending a half-back combination with a combined total of three caps into a Test match in a potentially intimidating stadium in northern Argentina against a pair of Pumas, Nicolas Sanchez and Martin Landajo, who numbered 144 caps between them.
Sanchez and Landajo were the half-backs who took Argentina to the World Cup semi-final three years ago, but they barely fired a shot on Saturday. The Scottish forwards were terrific in grinding down their opposite numbers in that madcap opening 40 minutes, but it was really Hastings and Horne who set the wheels in motion.
This was not a Test win that they piggy-backed on to. They didn't just start to express themselves and do damage after the forwards had done the hard grunt. Hastings and Horne took control from the get-go.
They cut holes through the Pumas and scored early and then scored again. This was a young partnership that had experienced a difficult week after Houston but learned from that experience and grew larger because of it.
It was eerie seeing all those Scottish tries going in. Argentina were shockingly bad, that has to be said. That's not Townsend's concern.
Adam Hastings still has to cement regular rugby with Glasgow Warriors
He needed a win to hush the chat about the poor away record and he got it. He needed a win, also, to make sure that a lot of his young players didn't return with the memory of Houston as their abiding moment on tour. That changed in Resistencia.
What are the big takeaways from this tour? It's fair to say that Sean Maitland and Tommy Seymour have now got company on the wing in the shape of the rapidly-advancing Blair Kinghorn. If you were picking a Six Nations team right now, it would be hard to leave him out.
Townsend is blessed with centres and if he ever has them all fit at the same time then he's got a headache. Argentina showed the value of Pete Horne, not just in his organisation and communication on the day but his leadership in the week after the meltdown in Houston.
Horne does not have the try-scoring explosiveness of Huw Jones, doesn't have the all-round excellence of Duncan Taylor (how Townsend wants this guy to catch a break from the injury Gods), but his intelligence as a rugby player is valued massively inside the four walls of the squad. Horne was one of the key men in turning the failure of America into the success of Argentina.
He had a job to do as well on his wee brother, who was a frustrated soul after the debut in Houston. Horne the younger came on tour as a rookie. He leaves it as part of the scrum-half conversation for the autumn Tests.
Without Finn Russell on tour, Townsend wanted to explore his options at 10. Hastings played in all three Tests. The challenge for him now is to get back to Glasgow Warriors and make himself Dave Rennie's 10. Or, at the very least, make himself a regular 10 behind Pete Horne, who is slated to be in the position a lot next season at Scotstoun.
Hastings clearly has something, but the momentum he got in Argentina will soon vanish if he doesn't play. You can't see Hastings playing Six Nations or World Cup, but he doesn't need to.
Blair Kinghorn confirmed his status as one of rugby's hot properties
For him, at his tender age, it's all about building his career now. He has to get games - and plenty of them.
This was a tour of discovery. Magnus Bradbury stepped up, no doubt about it. He looks bigger and more robust now than he did a year ago when his work-rate wasn't nearly high enough. In John Barclay's absence, Bradbury looks the obvious starting six in the autumn.
Townsend's back-row will be interesting. Before he went to Edmonton, David Denton hadn't started a Test match for Scotland in more than two years, but he seems to be getting back to the belligerent form he showed when excelling at the World Cup.
He's off to Leicester Tigers now. That should be a good move for him. Denton is lighting fires under Ryan Wilson as Scotland's number eight.
Nobody is going to shift an in-form Hamish Watson at openside, but Jamie Ritchie had a good tour and what a compelling shift Fraser Brown put in at seven against Argentina.
There's a fine line between a front-row forward and an openside these days and Brown proved it. He's a player who's had a rotten year with injury and he's one of the feelgood stories of the trip.
It might not have had the undying drama of Ireland's three-Test epic in Australia, or the profile of England's series loss in South Africa, but it was important and instructive and it had a howitzer of a finale.