Six Nations: Scotland on a mission to avoid the wooden spoon

Scotland coach Andy Robinson leaves today with his side for Rome, bidding to end a run of six defeats and avert a first Six Nations whitewash suffered by Scotland since Matt Williams’ first year as coach in 2004.

A big fan of motivational speakers, Robinson has turned for help to Floyd Woodrow. The former SAS soldier was brought into Murrayfield by the SRU’s director of performance rugby Graham Lowe earlier this season to speak to players at Edinburgh and Glasgow. He describes himself as a world-class motivational speaker, with testimonials on his website from across sport, business and government.

An MBE and chairman and CEO of Chrysalis Worldwide, which terms itself ‘the world’s leading values-based performance optimisation organisation’ – whatever that means – Woodrow, at 22, was one of the youngest soldiers to be selected for the UK’s elite Special Air Service Regiment (SAS).

He was awarded the UK’s second-highest award for gallantry, the Distinguished Conduct Medal, for work in Afghanistan, and studied law and psychology.

Robinson said: “He is a very good motivator. He was in the SAS and he has been working with the SRU since before the Six Nations. I have worked with him before and decided to bring him in this week to speak to the players. He has been very good and we talked about what we want to achieve.”

He did not go into detail about what Woodrow had said or done, but scrum-half Chris Cusiter provided more insight into the work of the former soldier and how he felt it had already had an effect.

The former Scotland skipper, who is on the bench again this week as Mike Blair remains the starting No 9, said: “We had a session yesterday evening and then one this afternoon, a sort of round-up. There’s been a lot of interaction with him, in groups, back and forwards, talking about things we feel we do well and things we don’t do well enough; little indicators that are hugely important for our performance and how we can recognise those and improve. It was interesting.

“He was through at Glasgow early in the season and he has something like 24 years in the SAS and so has different things, different stories, and it’s well worth a listen.”

Pushed on how he felt the motivational work would make a difference to the current Scotland squad, and impact on Saturday’s efforts to end a six-game losing run, Cusiter insisted that there was a feeling that Woodrow’s involvement had already had a positive effect.

“He’s obviously quite experienced in what he does and trying to get the best out of teams, so they’re very subtle little things he does. But he observed us in training yesterday and made a few comments, and we talked a lot about that and how we could improve performance for today’s session for example. Straight away there was a big difference.”

With a small army of coaching staff and conditioning, medical and analytical experts around the national team these days, one might wonder why they required more coaching. But Cusiter agreed that it was more the effect of a fresh voice and perhaps the ability of an outsider to distil thoughts at this point in a difficult campaign, that was most welcome.

“Yes, it is [a fresh voice]. He’s a really interesting guy and you have to be open to all sorts of different opinions and voices. What he talks about is very applicable to rugby and team situations.

“There are a whole lot of things that happen in a training session or a game of rugby, and it’s trying to narrow down that focus on two or three areas that can help the team function better. Of course you get that from the coaches and as players you have to be trying to do that, but to get a helping hand from someone with his experience and who helps a lot of teams is helpful. It’s good just to freshen things up and give us a real focus ahead of this weekend.”

Robinson is clearly under pressure to turn around Scots fortunes, but he has no plans to walk away before his contract expires in 2015. However, he needs help from his players.

He insisted, however, that Woodrow’s involvement was not an exercise in trying to lift pressure from the players ahead of the final battle in the new venue of the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, which seems certain to have over 75,000 screaming Azzurri fans and a home side also confident of claiming their one and only win of the championship.

“There is pressure but they need to cope with it,” he added. “This is a Test match and there are going to be tough Italians running at them. It is not going to be nice. The Italians are fiercely proud and they will ferociously protect their territory. Their scrummage and mauling game can put any team under pressure and, if you look at their last half a dozen games, they have been very close after 50 minutes.

“That highlights the fact we have got to control the scoreboard and deal with the inevitable pressure. We need to knock the white shirts over time and time again and show the mentality that we are not going to break.”