'˜Two early tries affected us' says Scotland's Ben Toolis

Ben Toolis tries to charge down Gareth Davies box-kick. Picture: Getty.

“It is hugely disappointing,” replied the Scotland lock. “Obviously no one wanted to start the campaign like that. From that point of view, you don’t really need me to tell you what the dressing room was like at the end. It was a pretty quiet place.

“All the boys are just gutted because we all know we can play so much  better than that.

“The performance against Wales was certainly not a reflection of how we have been playing over the last six months. You are going to have down times in your career and this is one of them.

“We were miles off it and we need to put it behind us and focus on France because we have a game against them on Sunday.”

Such is the ubiquity of the modern media manager that there is rarely so much as a cigarette paper between what any two members of the Scotland squad are saying on any given topic but Toolis went a little  off-piste yesterday.

Earlier on in proceedings, his coach Gregor Townsend had flatly denied that his team were guilty of chasing the game, forcing passes that were never on and playing far too much rugby from far too deep, from the moment in the 14th minute when the Welsh went 14 points up. “No,” Townsend replied to that very question. “There’s plenty time in a game to score tries and I don’t think our errors in the first half were us forcing it.”

If Toolis is to be believed, the Scotland coach was singing from a different song book in that very subdued Scots’ dressing room immediately after the match. When asked if Scotland had been chasing the game too early, the big Aussie-born lock replied: “We coughed up two tries pretty early on and it’s going to be a massive hit to you mentally. Even although you try to not let it affect you, I think, if we are honest, we can say it did on Saturday.

“The game was still there for us but maybe we tried to force it after that. Gregor [Townsend] said he felt we were chasing the game from then on in and he was probably right.”

It certainly looked that way from the stands. Maybe the coach changed his mind on the walk from the dressing room to the press conference. Toolis also claimed that Wales didn’t surprise the Scots on Saturday but the evidence on the ground fails to back him up. Buoyed by the confidence that comes from two early tries, the home side cut loose and could have scored several more scores had every pass gone to hand.

With ten Scarlets in the side, including six of the seven starting backs, Wales took a leaf from the Llanelli play book and mixed up their game, hitting short before sending the ball wide with speed and accuracy. It appeared to catch the Scots on the hop since there was acres of space in the wider channels.

“They didn’t surprise us at all,” the lock insisted. “We were just off our game on Saturday, that was pretty obvious.

“We simply didn’t perform to the standards of late, or indeed to the standards we’d set ourselves in training all week. We made so many  mistakes and that’s always going to hurt you.”

Certainly the Scots didn’t begin to perform and a plethora of errors hurt them time and again but some credit goes to Wales for the way that they played. It left Welsh fans, and a good few journalists, wondering out loud just what Warren Gatland might have achieved during his long sojourn in the Principality had he displayed similar ambition from the get go. If anything Scotland’s problem is the very opposite. Rather than any lack of ambition, it’s just possible that this squad has a little too much.