Gregor Townsend admits Scotland's Six Nations chances have been dented by defeat to Wales

While disappointed with aspects of his team’s display, Gregor Townsend felt there wasn’t a huge difference in performance levels between the win over England on week one and the defeat by Wales in Cardiff.

Both matches finished 20-17 to the home side, with Scotland on the wrong side of the scoreline at the Principality Stadium.

The coach felt they were guilty of “poor execution” as they allowed a winning position to slip away in the second half.

“The obvious emotion is disappointment,” said Townsend, whose side led 17-14 with 22 minutes remaining. “You only get five games in the Six Nations so if you lose one of them it has a negative effect on your chances of winning the tournament. Obviously our loss today wasn’t good enough. There's a lot of disappointment in the changing room in our group.

Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend during the Guinness Six Nations to Wales at the Principality Stadium, Cardiff.

“I think there were big moments in the second half where we didn’t execute as we intended or the referee gave penalties to the opposition. We didn’t control the second half. After we went ahead on the scoreboard we needed to kick on and we weren’t able to do that.”

Scotland’s Calcutta Cup win had generated huge optimism that they could go to Cardiff and end their 20-year wait for a win in the Welsh capital. However, they came up against a home side who looked reinvigorated following their dismal defeat against Ireland in Dublin on the opening weekend of the championship.

“There wasn’t a huge number of differences between the two performances,” said Townsend of Scotland’s opening two games. “We played better against England than we did today but we didn’t play at our best. Today’s game was really stop-start in the second half.

“We have to control what we can control. Our performance had to be better in the last 20 minutes. We expected our guys to kick on and they didn’t and that’s the difference because we did kick on in the last 20 against England.”

The Scotland coach was reluctant to comment on the yellow card shown to Finn Russell late in the game because he had not seen replays of the incident. Russell was sin-binned when he knocked the ball away one-handed from Wales replacement Dillon Lewis as the home side pushed hard for a try.

Dan Biggar scored the winning drop goal while Russell was off the pitch.

Asked what Scotland need to do to end their dismal run in Cardiff, Townsend said: “The obvious answer is to score more points than the opposition; that’s what we should have done and what we wanted to do today. It was a different scoreline from four years ago and the game went right to the end, but we didn’t play nearly as well as we can.

“Sometimes it is the opposition that stops you playing. In that second half we gave too many penalties away.”

Scotland had to replace Matt Fagerson with Magnus Bradbury in the first half but Townsend said it was too early to assess the extent of the No 8’s injury.

“I don’t have much information yet. It was a bang on his foot that made it impossible for him to continue. I thought he played very well in the time he had on the pitch, so did Magnus when he came on. At this stage we’re hopeful that the injury is no more than that.”

Scotland caught with 'hand in the cookie jar' by Wales

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