Tom English: Andy Robinson's team pay price for chances spurned and many strange decisions

Published on Saturday 27 February 2010 21:04

THE DESPERATE endgame typified so much of what went before. There Scotland were, stuck on their 22 with just one play left to save the match. What were the chances of them moving 80 metres downfield to score the elusive try given that earlier they had repeatedly got within five and failed to do so? Eighty metres; may as well have been 80 miles.

Oh, they tried. In that last passage they got it to halfway, but then lost it. Another spillage on a day that brought so many. By the time the referee Dave Pearson blew his final whistle, the action had returned to where it had started a minute and a half earlier– back on Scotland's 22. No ground gained, no progress made, running to stand still.

"Two weeks in a row this has happened to us," said Dan Parks. "We had our chances and we didn't take them."

No, Dan. It's not two weeks in a row, it's many years in a row. This Scotland performance and this latest, and wholly unavoidable, loss to Italy could have been overseen by Frank Hadden or Matt Williams or Ian McGeechan in that it was a repeating of past failings, a display that saw chances spurned, poor decisions made and a shocking penchant for loading a gun and firing it into their own feet.

With eight minutes left, that admirable old barrel, Allan Jacobsen, had a cut at the Italian line and was stopped just short. Scotland trailed by four points, but at least now they had an attacking scrum just five metres out. Good teams know what to do here. Good leaders made it bloody obvious. Set-play. Training-ground move. Patience. Accuracy. Try.

Scotland failed lamentably. Mike Blair fed the ball into the scrum and nobody hooked it back. The communication didn't exist. Ross Ford's boot didn't move. The ball rolled through the channel and practically came out the other side, where Italy seized on it and walloped it clear. Failing to hook the ball when you're within sniffing distance of the chalk on the Italian line is such a basic blunder, such a drastic error that it's hard to fathom. It's like a jockey turning up for the Grand National without his horse. You see scrums disintegrating because of pressure and cheating, but you rarely see one going awry because of somebody forgetting to hook the damn ball.

Conceding possession and territory in that instance was rugby suicide. They may as well have come in off the pitch at that point because the game was effectively over. You can't hand a team that kind of lift at that stage of a tight match and expect to come again. It happens so, so rarely. Did you see the body language?

The Italians looked ten feet tall. They threw back their shoulders and smacked each other's backs and praised God for this miracle of the non-hooking hooker that was suddenly bestowed upon them. As sporting psychology goes, it was the moment of the match.

How is it that Scotland can have most of the chances and most of the game's best players but still lose? Italy created one delicious moment and scored from it. The Scots, according to the statistics, made 22 visits into the Italian red-zone and yet couldn't cross their line. The TMO was kept busy, the home defence was kept frantic, but no Scot was good enough to unlock the defence.

It's true that Italy got away with murder at times. Three minutes before the break, Josh Sole should have been sin-binned. It was so blatant a yellow card offence that you could use it in coaching manuals as an example of the classic professional foul, Chris Cusiter getting scragged illegally at a ruck by the Italian.

And not any old ruck, an important one. Close to the Italy line, hence Sole's desperation. Pearson had a poor game, there's no doubt about it. Early in the second half, he gave a penalty against Al Kellock that was unjust. It was another ruck and the ball was out. Pearson said "No!" to Kellock, but still the ball was out and the lock was entitled to make a play for it. He did, got pinged and it cost Scotland three points.

But Pearson wasn't the difference. He didn't help, but nobody can legitimately pin much of the blame on the referee. Scotland had as much ball as they needed, as much possession and territory to win any game, but they didn't have the composure, didn't have the wit.

The credit from Cardiff has gone. They're zero from three and England are coming next and after that, a visit to Dublin. Scotland are not losing by much, but they're losing; losing games they should be winning.

Certain parts of their game are getting better; the scrum, the lineout, the amount of possession they're winning, the number of try-scoring opportunities they're creating. All good, all encouraging. But the lack of killer instinct is a continuing calamity. When you can't score from almost two dozen separate visits to the Italian 22 then you don't deserve to win the game. Such profligacy is destroying Robinson's team.

"It's one that got away," said Robinson, later. He should have said, "another one that got away."