Six Nations: Shellshocked Allan Jacobsen admits second half was ‘unacceptable’

YOUNG or old, experienced or raw, the faces looked the same as the Scotland players headed home from Dublin trying to comprehend how they had fallen so lamely to Ireland in the Aviva Stadium.

Allan Jacobsen, the veteran prop, has been here before, many times, but even the 33-year-old was at loss to find the words. “I don’t really know what to say,” he said. “It’s just really frustrating. I can’t explain that performance.

“We played some good stuff and some absolutely horrendous stuff. I don’t know. It’s hard to say how much of a step back this is. We’ve been playing a game-plan in this tournament and in the games leading up to this where we had been improving, and we felt we still had it going, but everything just fell by the wayside.

“Our performance in the second half was just unacceptable. They’re obviously a good team but our execution and our own drills let us down, simple as.”

Experienced centre Graeme Morrison added: “I feel pretty numb. We came full of belief, with a lot to play for and obviously things didn’t go our way. The feeling was night and day to how we were on the pitch against France. It just felt for me really flat and the tries they scored in the first half were a real kick in the stomach.”

Big lock Richie Gray, at just 22, scored his first international try with a great run and dummy late in the first half which briefly sparked hope, but he struggled to see it as any form of consolation. “I’ll be telling the kids it was 50 metres although it was probably more like 20,” he joked. “I was going to go for the pass [to Lee Jones] and [Rob] Kearney sort of bought it so I thought I’d just go myself.

“We underperformed, no ifs or buts. That was probably our worst performance of the championship. We’re massively disappointed with that. There’s a lot of hurt in the dressing room.”

Greig Laidlaw, making his third Test appearance as a stand-off, spoke calmly, but his face betrayed a battle to keep a lid on an obvious anger. “You’re disappointed after every defeat but four defeats now is obviously really disappointing. The first games were good performances but we never got results, but this was a poor performance and we let it get away.

“Our defence let us down. Silly errors in the first half put us under needless pressure and we gave away some daft tries. We could have attacked better too. We got in some good positions but a couple of times we were too flat and there were a couple of forward passes in there. We didn’t come on to the ball hard enough to create any pressure.

“We lost a few lineouts, scrums got messy and we didn’t build any phases because of that, and if you can’t do that it’s a tough old game.”

Jacobsen knows better than most what the team will face in Rome in this weekend’s tournament finale, the extra energy Italy will possess as they again seek to avoid the wooden spoon by taking the Scottish scalp.

“We have a massive game next week,” said the prop. “They’ve been tough games every time I’ve played over there [Rome].

“We just need to get our heads right, get out Monday and get ready for it. And if being involved in a performance like that doesn’t motivate you to do better then you shouldn’t be there.”