Scotland's Dan Parks picked up another man-of-the-match performance after his latest world-class kicking display.

And then he revealed it was all down to taking his boots into the shower with him.

Parks finally had a victory to add to an individual accolade this afternoon as Scotland stunned Ireland at Croke Park to avoid the RBS 6 Nations wooden spoon and end their frustrating championship on a high.

Glasgow fly-half Parks, who has now been man of the match in three of his four games since his 16-month Test exile ended five weeks ago, produced arguably his greatest performance for Scotland today.

The 31-year-old had already kicked 15 points when, with two minutes remaining and the scores level at 20-20, he stepped up to send a nerveless penalty between the posts to seal his country's only win of the tournament.

He said afterwards: "I get a lot of grief from the guys about looking after my boots all the time and shining them up after each session.

"But the Gilberts came good for me today, certainly.

"Every training session, I'll always take my boots into the shower with me and clean them up.

"I like to look after my stuff."

Parks was jeered by the vast majority of the 80,000 in the stadium as he stepped up but he did not care one jot after the ball left his boot.

"It was great for me because I knew it was going through," he said.

"The crowd obviously want their team to win and they'll do anything they can to put you off."

Revealing he had walked the pitch before the match to try to get a feel of the wind, he added: "I knew if I hit it perfectly, it would go through, and I hit it perfectly."

Johnnie Beattie would not have been far behind Parks in the man-of-the-match stakes after crashing through three tackles to score a sensational first-half try.

Parks said: "That's the sort of stuff for me which really gives me a massive buzz.

"He's so powerful - that was just awesome."

The fly-half admitted thoughts of Scotland's incredible collapse in Wales had entered his mind.

"There's always that thought," he said.

"John Barclay spoke at half-time about not letting this happen."

Describing hearing the final whistle as "such a great moment", Parks claimed Scotland should have finished second in the table instead of second bottom.

"We've deserved, I personally believe, four wins out of this championship," he said.

"Every single game I've been involved in - which has been the last four - we could and should've won.

"Wales, I think we all know we should've won that game - it was a freak day.

"Italy away from home, they did well to get the win but we weren't at our best that day.

"England, we probably could've won that.

"It could've been a different championship for us.

"But we'll take the win and we're really delighted."