Smith - wants to hang around. (Getty Images)

By Simon Stone, PA Sport, Brisbane

Veteran Scottish prop Tom Smith has welcomed the arrival of Matt Williams as head coach and claimed the appointment will lift his team-mates out of the comfort zone.

It might be a strange comment, coming just hours after the Tartan Army had turned in easily their best display of a previously horrendous World Cup campaign but the Lions front-row believes a new voice can lift his team to higher standards.

And, far from thinking about joining Bryan Redpath and Kenny Logan in retirement from the international stage, 32-year-old Smith is eager to remain involved.

"It will be good for the squad to have some change," said the softly-spoken Northampton star.

"It is not just cosmetic, the captain and coaches are both going, it will be a completely different set-up and that will bring us out of the comfort zone.

"We will have to get used to a new regime and we will have to play for our spots.

"I am a bit tired at the moment but weary bodies heal pretty quickly and I am keen to remain involved."

Smith was one of the few Scots to perform with distinction throughout the tournament and it was his last-gasp try against Fiji in his 50th international that ensured there was no embarrassingly early return home.

Instead, outgoing coach Ian McGeechan and his squad were able to fly out of Brisbane this morning for an overnight stay in Sydney with their heads held high after a battling performance at Suncorp Stadium which raised serious question marks over the hosts' title credentials.

Arrogant Wallabies chief Eddie Jones attempted to gloss over the alarming defects in his own team's play with a disparaging dismissal of the Scottish performance.

"It was a tough first half but we put the game to bed pretty easily in the second," he said.

"We knew if we put enough pressure on them the errors would come and we capitalised on them."

As a straightforward summary of a game locked at 9-9 at the interval, Jones' comments were fairly accurate.

They did however manage to ignore the total demolition of his team's line-out, an almost non-existent physical presence in the pack and a woeful back-line performance in which both Mat Rogers and Wendell Sailor appeared at times not to know how to even catch the ball.

Lote Tuqiri was the only consistent Australian attacking threat in a team which having struggled to overcome Ireland and Scotland in the past two weeks, is facing elimination and humiliation against the rampant All Blacks at Telstra Stadium next Saturday unless drastic improvement is made.

After initially suggesting things looked bleak for Matt Giteau, who limped off the field with an ankle injury last night, Jones today discovered his replacement fly-half only suffered a minor ligament strain and is rated 50-50 to be fit to face New Zealand.

It is probably just as well as Stephen Larkham's legendary powers appear to be waning with every game and any comparison with Carlos Spencer's performance against South Africa is almost laughable.

Not that the prospect of Australian pain will be of much comfort to the Scots as they embark on their long flight home.

For the fourth time in five World Cups they have been left to reflect on a plucky quarter-final display that ended in defeat and if departing director of rugby Jim Telfer is to be believed, some severe navel-gazing needs to take place if fortunes are to change north of the border.

There is no reason to be quite so downbeat, especially now Chris Paterson has been installed into the stand-off role he should have been given 12 months ago, and Smith is mildly optimistic about the future.

"We are not getting carried away because that Australian team is not the best and we still lost and had 30 points put on us," he said.

"But after the campaign we have had, it was important we came away with our heads held high.

"There is still work to do but the performance was full of passion and commitment and everyone crawled off at the end.

"Hopefully in the Six Nations and when we come back to Australia on tour next summer we will be able to play at the same level for the full 80 minutes."