Heartbreaking defeat can be the making of this Scotland team

Published on Sunday 14 February 2010 22:57

A FAMOUS American once said that you've got to learn to survive defeat. "That's when you develop character." Fair enough, it was Richard Nixon who came out with that line and ol' Tricky never really did practise what he preached, but his message was sound enough. And relevant today.

Click here to enter our Six Nations predictor

Surviving defeat and developing character is the name of the game now for Scotland. They can bemoan the injustice of Cardiff if they wish. They can point to the barrage of injuries that hampered them and criticise the referee George Clancy for sending Phil Godman to the bin, but that kind of mindset is not going to get them anywhere. What they need to do is face up to the reality of those closing minutes and accept that the real damage was not done by Leigh Halfpenny, who scored the second Welsh try, or Shane Williams, who got the critical third, or Byrne or Clancy or anybody else, but themselves.

There's already been much talk of the Godman incident. Beating a slow retreat home yesterday, the Scottish fans were still discussing it and will do for some time to come. Godman says he didn't trip Byrne. Byrne says he did. There doesn't seem to be a definitive camera angle that tells the real story but there is something that should be said here.

Byrne had chipped over Godman, who was the last man in Scotland's defence. He was racing on to a loose ball with a yard or two advantage over his nearest pursuers. Would he want to take a dive in those circumstances when he would have been convinced that a match-winning score was likely?

It's a moot point, frankly. What is clear, though, is that Scotland will have to dig deep to recover from this. Perhaps every team that was ever worth a damn had to go through a day like Saturday in order to develop the mental toughness to survive. Maybe that's part of the process. You experience bitter and self-inflicted loss – Chris Cusiter and Mike Blair, class acts both, will be going through torture right now – and you grow from it. It was that prize-fighter and sage, Floyd Patterson, who said that it's in defeat that a man reveals himself. Well, if that's true, the events of the next few weeks are going to be gripping. How Scotland deal with what happened to them in Wales is going to define their championship, their year, and perhaps even the Robinson era.

The errors at the end are all the harder to take because of the excellence of earlier. Before the deluge of Welsh points, we saw things that ought to get us excited. At last, we had a vision of a new Scotland, a Scotland that dictated the play, that was clever and clinical in possession and organised and defiant without the ball. The huff and puff of multiple, and fruitless, phases that we saw too often in the recent past, was gone and instead there came a directness and an intelligence that had the Welsh rocking for more than 70 minutes. Warren Gatland said the Scots didn't create much. With respect to the Kiwi, he was talking garbage.

Dan Parks' control was a wonder. Truly it was. You knock him and knock him and knock him again but there is a resolve about Parks that you have to admire, a steel that was at the heart of Scotland. A week ago he was so far out of the picture he could barely be seen, but now, he's a fundamental part of the set-up. Robinson will have cause to think about that. How did he underestimate Parks so greatly that he didn't give him a shot until his fifth game in charge?

Parks left the field in the 77th minute and the worst of the damage was done thereafter. It's worth pondering for a moment whether Scotland's collapse would have happened had Parks been able see the game out. Not that it matters now, alas, but this observer would have happily bet the mortgage on an away win had Parks played the full 82 minutes.

A lament for lost points is not going to do much good now. There's a trip to Rome to prepare for and much to think about. Ally Dickinson is a nice footballer but Scotland don't need 'nice' in Italy. They need stability and Allan Jacobsen has a better chance at providing it at loosehead. Simon Danielli should come in on the wing. Dougie Hall might get the nod over Scott Lawson on the bench. Big issues. Most of all, the thoughts are with Thom Evans. All the good wishes in the world go out to him.

Behind that tough exterior there exists within Robinson a sensitivity that is easily assaulted. He is deeply protective of his players and hugely proud of them. It's why he made an appeal for positivity in the hours after the final whistle. It was an extraordinary match with an unprecedented finale and it's difficult to strike a balance between applauding the Scots for their 77 minutes of heroics and slamming them for their five minutes of lunacy. How do you pitch it? It's not easy.

Amid the despair, there is much to be upbeat about. There was a stirring in Cardiff of something decent, but to build on it Robinson's men are going to have to listen to Nixon. Learn how to survive this and come again and there can be better days ahead. To Rome, then. Hopefully as wiser and stronger men.