Iain Morrison: ‘Defeat eats away your self-belief like acid, slowly and painfully’

MODERN Test players are fabulously well-conditioned and they enjoy the best dietary advice on the planet. They watch endless hours of tapes on specially provided laptops and know more about the man they face than his own wife does.

They must memorise play books the size of an encyclopedia and learn Swahili to understand the lineout calls, but all of that is rendered irrelevant if they aren’t mentally ready to put their bodies on the line for the country they represent, and at no point in Saturday’s match did the Scots look collectively up for this one.

A mediocre English team has grown in stature with every match until they were of such a size that they swatted aside a very decent Irish XV with what was almost a swagger at Twickenham. The self-belief and confidence has grown with each performance, and Wales were lucky they played them when they did as even the Grand Slam heroes would not fancy meeting England on Saturday’s form.

The exact opposite has happened with Scotland who needed that all- important win in the opening game and are still suffering the consequences of not getting it. The Scots have visibly shrunk since the Calcutta Cup match, as a little more confidence has drained away with each passing match.

As someone pointed out, losing every week is an exhausting business. It takes it out of you mentally on top of the inevitable physical battering. It eats away your self-belief like acid, slowly and painfully, until you start questioning every basic tenet that you hold dear. Losing heightens whatever tensions are in the squad, and the added pressure on players and coaches alike make it a lot less enjoyable than elite sport should be.

Ross Ford insisted that the team spirit was intact and called this squad of players “tight”, but the players spoke much louder on the pitch where they suffered a collective collapse of worrying proportions. The forwards have dominated possession and territory against almost every team they have played this season but they spent almost the entire first half in Rome stuck deep inside their own 22.

In defending the fighting spirit of his team, the skipper pointed to the doughty defence during that first half which held the Italians at bay and meant the match was tied 3-3 at half-time, a scoreline that had the Italians rubbing their eyes in disbelief.

Ford has a point in that the Scots’ tackling percentage, at 96 per cent, was at the top end of the range (it was just 88 per cent in Dublin by comparison).

But Ford didn’t mention the two penalties Mirco Bergamasco sent wide and the umpteen try-scoring opportunities Italy botched. Time and again, especially when Scotland were short-handed early in the second half, the Italians cut inside when the Scots were short of numbers on the flanks and, in homage to the Cheltenham festival, veteran hooker Fabio Ongaro was obviously playing in blinkers.

The poor lineout copped the blame for all Scotland’s woes in Rome and Ford duly put his hand up for the six throws that missed their mark, but that is only half the story. Six turnovers is a lot of ball to give away but it doesn’t explain why the Scots were out-muscled at the breakdown by an aggressive and committed Italian team. Despite fielding two specialists in the dark arts in their back row, Scotland still lost the turnover stats by 6 to 4.

On the rare occasions they did set foot in the Italian red zone, the Scots offered almost nothing in attack. Rome is known as the Eternal City presumably because that’s how long it would take this Scottish team to score a try here. Players were isolated, set piece moves were non-existent and it’s difficult to remember a single genuine try-scoring opportunity for the visiting team. The lack of self-belief was more corrosive in Rome than the crumbling lineout.

This Scottish team are not world beaters but they are nowhere near as bad as they looked on Saturday, and had they played, to take just one example, like they did for 70 minutes against France they would have beaten Italy with something to spare.

Things are not going to get any easier in the summer, with three Tests against Australia, Fiji and Samoa. Even the islanders will fancy their chances against a Scotland team whose confidence has taken such a hammering in the Six Nations.